Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

The oligarchic character of the modern English commonwealth does not rest, like many oligarchies, on the cruelty of the rich to the poor. It does not even rest on the kindness of the rich to the poor. It rests on the perennial and unfailing kindness of the poor to the rich.

The supreme adventure is being BORN

I should say that psycho-analysis was confession without absolution.

Surprise is the secret of joy.

We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent. We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre's castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return to at evening.

There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.

I am not absentminded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.

Every true artist does feel, consciously or unconsciously, that he is touching transcendental truths; that his images are shadows of things seen through the veil. In other words, the natural mystic does know that there is something there, something behind the clouds or within the trees; but he believes that the pursuit of beauty is the way to find it; that imagination is a sort of incantation that can call it up.

The unconscious democracy of America is a very fine thing. It is a true and deep and instinctive assumption of the equality of citizens, which even voting and elections have not destroyed.

[Paradox is] truth standing on its head to gain attention.

Every true artist feels that he is touching transcendental truths; that his images are shadows of things seen through the veil.

When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.

The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

Big Business and State Socialism are very much alike, especially Big Business.

Family is the theatre of the spiritual drama, the place where things happen, especially the things that matter.

It is a mathematical fact that if a line be not perfectly directed towards a point, it will actually go further away from it as it comes nearer to it.

Liberty is the very last idea that seems to occur to anybody, in considering any political or social proposal. It is only necessary for anybody for any reason to allege any evidence of any evil in any human practice, for people instantly to suggest that the practice should be suppressed by the police.

Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

The eagle has no liberty; he only has loneliness.

If there were no God, there would be no atheists.

He wondered why the pelican was the symbol of charity, except it was that it wanted a good deal of charity to admire a pelican.

An enormous amount of modern ingenuity is expended on finding defences for the indefensible conduct of the powerful. As I have said above, these defences generally exhibit themselves most emphatically in the form of appeals to physical science. And of all the forms in which science, or pseudo-science, has come to the rescue of the rich and stupid, there is none so singular as the singular invention of the theory of races.

The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. ... It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wilderness lies in wait.

There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect. Men do not quarrel about the meaning of sunsets; they never dispute that the hawthorn says the best and wittiest thing about the spring.

Romance is the deepest thing in life. It is deeper than reality.

somehow one must love the world without being worldly.

There again," said Syme irritably, "what is there poetical about being in revolt? You might as well say that it is poetical to be sea-sick. Being sick is a revolt. Both being sick and being rebellious may be the wholesome thing on certain desperate occasions; but I'm hanged if I can see why they are poetical...It is things going right," he cried, "that is poetical! Our digestions, for instance, going sacredly and silently right, that is the foundation of all poetry...the most poetical thing in the world is not being sick.

It is impossible without humility to enjoy anything - even pride.

If prosperity is regarded as the reward of virtue it will be regarded as the symptom of virtue.

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.

Whatever else may be said of man, this one thing is clear: He is not what he is capable of being.

And pray where in earth or heaven are there prudent marriages-Might as well talk about prudent suicides.

...the primary paradox that man is superior to all the things around him and yet is at their mercy.

People talk of the pathos and failure of plain women; but it is a more terrible thing that a beautiful woman may succeed in everything but womanhood.

Circumstances break men's bones; it has never been shown that they break men's optimism.

We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press... It is not we who silence the press. It is the press who silences us.

Truth is sacred; and if you tell the truth too often nobody will believe it.

Savages and modern artists are alike strangely driven to create something uglier than themselves. but the artists find it harder.

Such professions as the soldier and the lawyer ... give ample opportunity for crimes but not much for mere illusions. ... If you have lost a battle you cannot believe you have won it; if your client is hanged you cannot pretend that you have gotten him off.

Poets do not go mad, but chess players do.

[Fairy tales] make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.

He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it.

Dipsomaniac and the abstainer are not only both mistaken, but they both make the same mistake. They both regard wine as a drug and not as a drink.

Spring never is spring unless it comes too soon.

Man is always something worse or something better than an animal; and a mere argument from animal perfection never touches him at all. Thus, in sex no animal is either chivalrous or obscene. And thus no animal invented anything so bad as drunkeness - or so good as drink.

It is the root of all religion that a man knows that he is nothing in order to thank God that he is something.

Man knows that there are in the soul tints more bewildering, more numberless, and more nameless that the colors of an autumn forest....Yet he seriously believes that these things can every one of them , in all their tones and semi-tones, in all their blends and unions, be accurately represented by an arbitrary system of grunts and squeals. He believes that an ordinary civilized stockbroker can really produce out of his own inside noises which denote all the mysteries of memory and all the agonies of desire.