Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time.

When men cease to believe in God, they will believe in anything

If man is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust.

The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade other people how good they are.

When we look upon lives so human and yet so small, we feel as if we ourselves were enlarged to an embarrassing bigness of stature. We feel the same kind of obligation to these creatures that a deity might feel if he had created something that he could not understand.

Pessimism is not in being tired of evil but in being tired of good. Despair does not lie in being weary of suffering, but in being weary of joy. It is when for some reason or other good things in a society no longer work that the society begins to decline; when its food does not feed, when its cures do not cure, when its blessings refuse to bless.

I have little doubt that when St. George had killed the dragon he was heartily afraid of the princess.

The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more.

If the apple hit Newton’s nose, Newton’s nose hit the apple.

To do Mohammed justice, his main attack was against the idolatries of Asia. Only he thought, just as the Arians did and just as the Unitarians do, that he could attack them better with a greater approximation to plain theism. What distinguishes his heresy from anything like an Arian or Albigensian heresy is that, as it sprang up on the borders of Christendom, it could spread outwards to a barbaric world.

Boyhood is a most complex and incomprehensible thing. Even when one has been through it, one does not understand what it was. A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been the boy.

Aristocracy is an atmosphere; it is sometimes a healthy atmosphere; but it is very hard to say when it becomes an unhealthy atmosphere. You can prove that a man is not the son of a king, or that he is not the delegate of a definite number of people. But you cannot prove that a man is not a gentleman.

The materialist is sure that history has been simply and solely a chain of causation, just as the [lunatic] is quite sure that he is simply and solely a chicken. Materialists and madmen never have doubts.

I am the fool in this story, and no rebel shall hurl me from my throne.

It seems to me,' said the other, 'That you are simply seeking a pretext to insult the Marquis.' By George!' said Syme facing round and looking at him, 'What a clever chap you are!

Many clever men like you have trusted to civilization. Many clever Babylonians, many clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilisation, what there is particularly immortal about yours?

An artist will betray himself by some sort of sincerity.

The more we are certain what good is, the more we shall see good in everything.

Soldiers have many faults, but they have one redeeming merit; they are never worshippers of force. Soldiers more than any other men are taught severely and systematically that might is not right. The fact is obvious. The might is in the hundred men who obey. The right (or what is held to be right) is in the one man who commands them.

All architecture is great architecture after sunset.

For when we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything.

We have passed the age of the demagogue, the man who has little to say and says it loud. We have come to the age of the mystagogue or don, the man who has nothing to say, but says it softly and impressively in an indistinct whisper.

Every time a man knocks on a brothel door, he is really knocking for God

The simplification of anything is always sensational.

Facts by themselves can often feed the flame of madness, because sanity is a spirit.

Price is a crazy and incalculable thing, while Value is an intrinsic and indestructible thing.

Business, especially big business, is now organized like an army. It is, as some would say, a sort of mild militarism without bloodshed; as I say, a militarism without the military virtues.

There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.

But since he stood for England And knew what England means, Unless you give him bacon You must not give him beans.

Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before.

Only poor men get hanged.

Modern man is educated to understand foreign languages and misunderstand foreigners.

If I think the universe is triangular, and you think it is square, there cannot be room for two universes. We may argue politely, we may argue humanely, we may argue with great mutual benefit: but, obviously, we must argue.

America has a genius for the encouragement of fame.

The true savage is a slave, and is always talking about what he must do; the true civilised man is a free man, and is always talking about what he may do.

There's a lot of difference between listening and hearing.

If a man does not talk to himself, it is because he is not worth talking to.

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.

There are two kinds of rebellion. The first is one in which the slave demands something that the tyrant has got. The second is one in which he demands something that the tyrant has not got.

You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.

In the glad old days, before the rise of modern morbidities...it used to be thought a disadvantage to be misunderstood.

Comforts that were rare among our forefathers are now multiplied in factories and handed out wholesale; and indeed, nobody nowadays, so long as he is content to go without air, space, quiet, decency and good manners, need be without anything whatever that he wants; or at least a reasonably cheap imitation of it.

Every heresy has been an effort to narrow the Church.

Gratitude, being nearly the greatest of human duties, is also nearly the most difficult.

A man imagines a happy marriage as a marriage of love; even if he makes fun of marriages that are without love, or feels sorry for lovers who are without marriage.

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.

Happiness is not only a hope, but also in some strange manner a memory ... we are all kings in exile.

Criticism is only words about words, and of what use are words about such words as these?