G. K. Chesterton Quotes

844 Sourced Quotes

Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful.

G. K. Chesterton
You may think a crime horrible because you could never commit it. I think it is horrible because I could commit it.

G. K. Chesterton
For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.

G. K. Chesterton
Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all.

G. K. Chesterton
He walked by instinct along one white road, on which early birds hopped and sang, and found himself outside a fenced garden. There he saw the sister of Gregory, the girl with the gold-red hair, cutting lilac before breakfast, with the great unconscious gravity of a girl.

G. K. Chesterton
We can't turn life into a pleasure. But we can choose such pleasures as are worthy of us and our immortal souls.

G. K. Chesterton
A straight liner is straight And a square mile is flat: But you learn in trigonometrics a trick worth two of that.

G. K. Chesterton
The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen.

G. K. Chesterton
'As you have made your bed, so you must lie on it'; which again is simply a lie. If I have made my bed uncomfortable, please God I will make it again.

G. K. Chesterton
When giving treats to friends or children, give them what they like, emphatically not what is good for them.

G. K. Chesterton
People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad.

G. K. Chesterton
O God of earth and altar,
Bow down and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die;
The walls of gold entomb us,
The swords of scorn divide,
Take not thy thunder from us,
But take away our pride.

G. K. Chesterton
But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.

G. K. Chesterton
Why should ANYTHING go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?

G. K. Chesterton
Blasphemy is an artistic effect, because blasphemy depends upon a philosophical conviction. Blasphemy depends upon belief and is fading with it. If any one doubts this, let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor.

G. K. Chesterton
'I'm afraid I'm a practical man,' said the doctor with gruff humour, 'and I don't bother much about religion and philosophy.'
'You'll never be a practical man till you do,' said Father Brown. 'Look here, doctor; you know me pretty well; I think you know I'm not a bigot. You know I know there are all sorts in all religions; good men in bad ones and bad men in good ones.

G. K. Chesterton
Science, that nameless being, declared that the weakest must go to the wall; especially in Wall Street.

G. K. Chesterton
I came to the conclusion that the optimist thought everything good except the pessimist, and that the pessimist thought everything bad, except himself.

G. K. Chesterton
The mere brute pleasure of reading—the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.

G. K. Chesterton
Odd, isn't it, that a thief and a vagabond should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and frivolous, and without fruit for God or man?

G. K. Chesterton
Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin-a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or not man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing.

G. K. Chesterton
Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf is better than a whole loaf.

G. K. Chesterton
To have seen you and your unforgotten face,
Brave as a blast of trumpets for the fray,
Pure as white lilies in a watery space,
It were something, though you went from me today.
To have known the things that from the weak are furled,
Perilous ancient passions, strange and high;
It is something to be wiser than the world,
It is something to be older than the sky.

G. K. Chesterton
Paradox has been defined as Truth standing on her head to get attention.

G. K. Chesterton
In the modern conflict between the Smile and the Laugh, I am all in favor of laughing. The recent stage of culture and criticism might very well be summed up as the men who smile criticizing the men who laugh.

G. K. Chesterton