Gilbert Chesterton Quotes
Collection of top 100 famous quotes about Gilbert Chesterton
Gilbert Chesterton Quotes & Sayings
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It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things forbidden.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
The people who are most bigoted are those who have no conviction at all.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
It is the chief value of legend to mix up the centuries while preserving the sentiment.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Free verse'? You may as well call sleeping in a ditch 'free architecture'.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
And they that rule in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they have no graves as yet.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
A large section of the intelligentsia seems wholly devoid of intelligence.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Each generation is converted by the saint who contradicts it most.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Why be something to everybody when you can be everything to somebody?
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Half a truth is better than no politics.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
A modern man may disapprove of some of his sweeping reforms, and approve others; but finds it difficult not to admire even where he does not approve.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
I am more than a devil; I am a man. I can do the one thing which Satan himself cannot do - I can die.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
If a man only likes victory he must always come late for the battle.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Every true artist feels that he is touching transcendental truths; that his images are shadows of things seen through the veil.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Price is a crazy and incalculable thing, while Value is an intrinsic and indestructible thing.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Every time a man knocks on a brothel door, he is really knocking for God
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Forms of expression always appear turgid to those who do not share the emotions they represent.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
To downgrade the human mind is bad theology.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
I am a bad reporter because everything seems to me worth reporting; and a bad reviewer because every sentence in every book suggests a separate essay.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Puritanism was an honourable mood; it was a noble fad. In other words, it was a highly creditable mistake.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
The golden age only comes to men when they have forgotten gold.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men rush towards complexity, but they yearn towards simplicity. They try to be kings; but they dream of being shepherds.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
It is human to err; and the only final and deadly error, among all our errors, is denying that we have ever erred.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
A great man is not a man so strong that he feels less than other men; he is a man so strong that he feels more.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
For Scotland has a double dose of the poison called heredity; the sense of blood in the aristocrat, the sense of doom in the Calvinist.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Nothing can ever overcome that one enormous sex (female) superiority that even the male child is born closer to his mother than to his father.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Altruists, with thin, weak voices, denounce Christ as an egoist. Egoists (with even thinner and weaker voices) denounce Him as an altruist.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
The philosophy of this world may be founded on facts, but its business is run on spiritual impressions and atmospheres.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
The worst moment for an atheist is when he feels a profound sense of gratitude and has no one to thank.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
I would never commit the positively anti-social action of robbing a bank, or worse still, working in one.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Whatever else we may say of our own age, for good or evil, nobody is likely to call it an Age of Reason.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
The human race is always trying this dodge of making everything entirely easy; but the difficulty which it shifts off one thing it shifts to another.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
In a world flagrant with the failures of civilization, what is there particularly immortal about our own?
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Feminists are those who cannot stand female characteristics.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
You never know the best about men until you know the worst about them.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
The determining bulk of Scotch people had heard of golf ever since they had heard of God and often considered the two as of equal importance.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Marriage halves our griefs, doubles our joys, and quadruples our expenses
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
When a woman puts up her fists to a man she is putting herself in the only posture in which he is not afraid of her.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Surprise is the secret of joy.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
It is very good for a man to talk about what he does not understand; as long as he understands that he does not understand it.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Research is the search of people who don't know what they want.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
There must be some good in the life of battle, for so many good men have enjoyed being soldiers.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
There are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
I should say that psycho-analysis was confession without absolution.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
The evolutionists seem to know everything about the missing link except the fact that it is missing.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
The old religionist cried out for his god. The new religionist cries out for some god to be his.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Over-civilization and barbarism are within an inch of each other. And a mark of both is the power of medicine-men.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Life exists for the love of music or beautiful things.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
One of the chief uses of religion is that it makes us remember our coming from darkness, the simple fact that we are created.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
It is the root of all religion that a man knows that he is nothing in order to thank God that he is something.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
By all men bond to Nothing, Being slaves without a lord, By one blind idiot world obeyed, Too blind to be abhorred.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
We are like the penny, because we have the image of the king stamped on us, the divine king.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
The danger of loss of faith in God is not that one will believe in nothing, but rather that one will believe in anything.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
God is like the sun; you cannot look at it, but without it you cannot look at anything else.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men rush toward complexity; but yearn for simplicity.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Faith means believing the unbelievable.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Acceptance is the truest kinship with humanity.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
A great curse has fallen upon modern life with the discovery of the vastness of the word Education.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Mysticism keeps mankind sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
The Universe is the most extraordinary masterpiece ever constructed by nobody.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
The decay of society is praised by artists as the decay of a corpse is praised by worms.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Is there anyone ... who will maintain that the Party System could have been created by people particularly fond of truth?
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Thanks are the highest form of thought.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
You cannot love a thing without wanting to fight for it.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Original sin is the only doctrine that's been empirically validated by 2,000 years of human history.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Fairy tales are more than true ...
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
When a man ceases to believe in god, he does not believe in nothing. He believes in everything.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
The Mass is not only about God becoming man, it is about Man becoming more himself.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
A feminist is someone who loathes being a woman and who dislikes the chief feminine characteristics.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
The poor complain that they are governed badly. The rich complain that they are governed at all.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
[A pacifist is] the last and least excusable on the list of the enemies of society.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
The strangest whim has seized me ... After all I think I will not hang myself today.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Boys like romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales-because they find them romantic.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
The wine they drink in Paradise
They make in Haute Lorraine. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
They make in Haute Lorraine. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
We are all in the same boat, in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Evil comes at leisure like the disease. Good comes in a hurry like the doctor.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Powerful men who have powerful passions use much of their strength in forging chains for themselves.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
In a world where everything is ridiculous, nothing can be ridiculed. You cannot unmask a mask.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Is ditchwater dull? Naturalists with microscopes have told me that it teems with quiet fun.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Nothing taken for granted; everything received with gratitude; everything passed on with grace.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
All men are ordinary men; the extraordinary men are those who know it.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
I agree with the realistic Irishman who said he preferred to prophesy after the event.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
There is no logical connection between flying and laying eggs.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
CIVILISATION is not to be judged by the rapidity of communication, but by the value of what is communicated.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
An almost unnatural vigilance is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Progress is the mother of all problems.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
The moderns do not realize modernity.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven't got any.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton