G. K. Chesterton Quotes

844 Sourced Quotes

It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money as to see the rich asking for more money. And advertisement is the rich asking for more money.

G. K. Chesterton
A third-class carriage is a community, while a first-class carriage is a place of wild hermits.

G. K. Chesterton
The outer ring of Christianity is a rigid guard of ethical abnegations and professional priests; but inside that inhuman guard you will find the old human life dancing like children and drinking wine like men; for Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom. But in the modern philosophy the case is opposite; it is its outer ring that is obviously artistic and emancipated; its despair is within.

G. K. Chesterton
Comradeship is obvious and universal and open; but it is only one kind of affection; it has characteristics that would destroy any other kind. Anyone who has known true comradeship in a club or in a regiment, knows that it is impersonal.

G. K. Chesterton
Oh with what prayers and fasting Shall mortal man deserve To see that glimpse of Heaven.

G. K. Chesterton
A turkey is more occult and awful than all the angels and archangels. In so far as God has partly revealed to us an angelic world, he has partly told us what an angel means. But God has never told us what a turkey means. And if you go and stare at a live turkey for an hour or two, you will find by the end of it that the enigma has rather increased than diminished.

G. K. Chesterton
What is the good of telling a community that it has every liberty except the liberty to make laws? The liberty to make laws is what constitutes a free people.

G. K. Chesterton
The word 'heresy' not only means no longer being wrong; it practically means being clear-headed and courageous. The word 'orthodoxy' not only no longer means being right; it practically
means being wrong

G. K. Chesterton
Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms [the child] to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.

G. K. Chesterton
Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this, that by its creed Joy becomes something gigantic, and Sadness something special and small.

G. K. Chesterton
If you spell a word wrong you have some temptation to think it wrong.

G. K. Chesterton
For the mass of men the idea of artistic creation can only be expressed by an idea unpopular in present discussions - the idea of property... Property is merely the art of the democracy... One would think, to hear people talk, that the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers were on the side of property. But obviously they are the enemies of property; because they are enemies of their own limitations.

G. K. Chesterton
It is the natural and legitimate ambition of a properly constituted geologist to see a glacier, witness an eruption and feel an earthquake.

G. K. Chesterton
Scientific phrases are used like scientific wheels and piston-rods to make swifter and smoother yet the path of the comfortable.

G. K. Chesterton
The grinding power of the plain words of the Gospel story is like the power of mill-stones, and those who can read them simply enough will feel as if rocks had been rolled upon them.

G. K. Chesterton
The telescope makes the world smaller; it is only the microscope that makes it larger.

G. K. Chesterton
And it did for one wild moment cross my mind that, perhaps, those might not be the very best judges of the relation of religion to happiness who, by their own account, had neither one nor the other.

G. K. Chesterton
Every remedy is a desperate remedy. Every cure is a miraculous cure. Curing a madman is not arguing with a philosopher; it is casting out a devil.

G. K. Chesterton
A small artist is content with art; a great artist is content with nothing except everything.

G. K. Chesterton
Powerful men who have powerful passions use much of their strength in forging chains for themselves.

G. K. Chesterton
Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of ideas. He is acquainted with ideas, and moves among them like a lion-tamer. Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are most dangerous is the man of no ideas. The man of no ideas will find the first idea fly to his head like wine to the head of a teetotaller.

G. K. Chesterton
Plato was only a Bernard Shaw who unfortunately made his jokes in Greek.

G. K. Chesterton
The great saint may be said to mix all his thoughts with thanks. All goods look better when they look like gifts.

G. K. Chesterton
The poetry of art is in beholding the single tower; the poetry of nature in seeing the single tree; the poetry of love in following the single woman; the poetry of religion in worshipping the single star.

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

G. K. Chesterton
People decided that it was impossible to achieve any of the good of Socialism, but they comforted themselves by achieving all the bad.

G. K. Chesterton
Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters, "Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe," or "Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet." They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They
cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complex picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can
only represent what is unusual.

G. K. Chesterton
Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense, every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else.

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
What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place...The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a nail in his boot that prevented him from going on. For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which made him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether.

G. K. Chesterton