G. K. Chesterton

There are a good many fools who call me a friend, and also a good many friends who call
me a fool.
– G. K. Chesterton

The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.
– G. K. Chesterton

An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.
An adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.
– G. K. Chesterton

Children are innocent and love justice, while most adults are wicked and prefer mercy.
– G. K. Chesterton

Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people
seriously.
– G. K. Chesterton

Just going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in your garage
makes you a car.
– G. K. Chesterton

I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
– G. K. Chesterton

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because
generally they are the same people.
– G. K. Chesterton

All men can be criminals, if tempted. All men can be heroes, if inspired.
– G. K. Chesterton

The word “good” has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at
a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.
– G. K. Chesterton

If there were no God, there would be no atheists.
– G. K. Chesterton

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
– G. K. Chesterton

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.
– G. K. Chesterton

Love is not blind – that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound. And the more it is bound the
less it is blind.
– G. K. Chesterton

Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.
– G. K. Chesterton

I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.
– G. K. Chesterton

Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they
tell us that dragons can be beaten.
– G. K. Chesterton

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that
falls on them unless they act.
– G. K. Chesterton

Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.
– G. K. Chesterton

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a
new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a
particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts
afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.
– G. K. Chesterton

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its
author.
– G. K. Chesterton

If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man
become in its long journey toward the stars?
– G. K. Chesterton

The first two facts which a healthy boy or girl feels about sex are these: First that it is
beautiful and then that it is dangerous.
– G. K. Chesterton

Men always talk about the most important things to total strangers. It is because in the total
stranger we perceive man himself; the image of God is not disguised by resemblances to an
uncle or doubts of the wisdom of a moustache. Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they
are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion.
– G. K. Chesterton

A man must be orthodox upon most things, or he will never even have time to preach his own
heresy.
– G. K. Chesterton

There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats
Grape-Nuts on principle.
– G. K. Chesterton

There is one thing which gives radiance to everything. It is the idea of something around the
corner.
– G. K. Chesterton

Thinking in isolation and with pride ends in being an idiot.
– 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. All this can mean one thing, and one thing only. It means that
people care less for whether they are philosophically right.
– G. K. Chesterton

We are all in the same boat, in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.
– G. K. Chesterton

Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.
– G. K. Chesterton

No animal ever invented anything as bad as drunkenness – or so good as drink.
– G. K. Chesterton

Earnest freethinkers need not worry themselves so much about the persecutions of the past.
Before the liberal idea is dead or triumphant we shall see wars and persecutions the like of
which the world has never seen.
– G. K. Chesterton

All men are ordinary men; the extraordinary men are those who know it.
– G. K. Chesterton

We should admire the subtlety of the Chinese view of life, which perceives that all human
imperfection is in very truth a crying imperfection.
– G. K. Chesterton

There is a law written in the darkest of the Books of Life, and it is this: If you look at a thing
nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth
time, you are in frightful danger of seeing it for the first time.
– G. K. Chesterton

To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born
once.
– G. K. Chesterton

There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who
makes every man feel great.
– G. K. Chesterton

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.
– G. K. Chesterton

Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.
– G. K. Chesterton

There are some people, nevertheless – and I am one of them – who think that the most
practical and important thing about a man is still his view of the universe.
– G. K. Chesterton

Every one on this earth should believe, amid whatever madness or moral failure, that his life
and temperament have some object on the earth. Everyone on the earth should believe that
he has something to give to the world which cannot otherwise be given.
– G. K. Chesterton

Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.
– G. K. Chesterton

If you convey to a woman that something ought to be done, there is always a dreadful danger
that she will suddenly do it.
– G. K. Chesterton

We should always endeavor to wonder at the permanent thing, not at the mere exception. We
should be startled by the sun, and not by the eclipse. We should wonder less at the
earthquake, and wonder more at the earth.
– G. K. Chesterton

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
– G. K. Chesterton

A sober man may become a drunkard through being a coward. A brave man may become a
coward through being a drunkard.
– G. K. Chesterton

I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in
romances. There are a great many human souls whom we should accept more kindly, and even
appreciate more clearly, if we simply thought of them as people in a story.
– G. K. Chesterton

Art is the signature of man.
– G. K. Chesterton

A man cannot be wise enough to be a great artist without being wise enough to wish to be a
philosopher. A man cannot have the energy to produce good art without having the energy
to wish to pass beyond it. A small artist is content with art; a great artist is content with
nothing except everything.
– G. K. Chesterton

There are two ways of dealing with nonsense in this world. One way is to put nonsense in the
right place; as when people put nonsense into nursery rhymes. The other is to put nonsense
in the wrong place; as when they put it into educational addresses, psychological criticisms,
and complaints against nursery rhymes or other normal amusements of mankind.
– G. K. Chesterton

Every man speaks of public opinion, and means by public opinion, public opinion minus his
opinion.
– G. K. Chesterton

Not only is suicide a sin, it is the sin. It is the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take
an interest in existence; the refusal to take the oath of loyalty to life. The man who kills a
man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men. As far as he is concerned he wipes
out the world.
– G. K. Chesterton

Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about
what evils they will call excusable.
– G. K. Chesterton

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

One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time.
– G. K. Chesterton

In the end it will not matter to us whether we fought with flails or reeds. It will matter to us
greatly on what side we fought.
– G. K. Chesterton

The repetition in nature may not be a mere recurrence. It may be a theatrical “encore.”
– G. K. Chesterton

As for science and religion, the known and admitted facts are few and plain enough. All that
the parsons say is unproved. All that the doctors say is disproved. That’s the only difference
between science and religion there’s ever been, or will be.
– G. K. Chesterton

Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.
– G. K. Chesterton

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: That a thing
constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it
exists, as the mother can love the unborn child.
– G. K. Chesterton

The humorous look of children is perhaps the most endearing of all the bonds that hold the
cosmos together.
– G. K. Chesterton

The simplification of anything is always sensational.
– G. K. Chesterton

A mystic is a man who separates heaven and earth even if he enjoys them both.
– G. K. Chesterton

With every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story which we are certain to
misunderstand.
– G. K. Chesterton

There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and a
tired man who wants a book to read.
– G. K. Chesterton

Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference which is an elegant name for ignorance.
– G. K. Chesterton

Customs are generally unselfish. Habits are nearly always selfish.
– G. K. Chesterton

One of his hobbies was to wait for the American Shakespeare – a hobby more patient than
angling.
– G. K. Chesterton

What a man can believe depends upon his philosophy, not upon the clock or the century.
– G. K. Chesterton

You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.
– G. K. Chesterton

Wit is a fighting thing and a working thing. A man may enjoy humour all by himself; he may
see a joke when no one else sees it; he may see the point and avoid it. But wit is a sword; it
is meant to make people feel the point as well as see it. All honest people saw the point of
Mark Twain’s wit. Not a few dishonest people felt it.
– G. K. Chesterton

The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world.
– G. K. Chesterton

A dead thing goes with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.
– G. K. Chesterton

Always be comic in a tragedy. What the deuce else can you do?
– G. K. Chesterton

You should not look a gift universe in the mouth.
– G. K. Chesterton

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

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

Romance is the deepest thing in life. It is deeper than reality.
– G. K. Chesterton

It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.
– G. K. Chesterton

America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth in
the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also
great literature.
– G. K. Chesterton

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
– G. K. Chesterton

All government is an ugly necessity.
– G. K. Chesterton

Silver is sometimes more valuable than gold, that is, in large quantities.
– G. K. Chesterton

To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith
means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.
– G. K. Chesterton

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the
democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of
those who merely happen to be walking about.
– G. K. Chesterton

The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate
and suicidal effort to persuade all the other people how good they are. It has been proved a
hundred times over that if you really wish to enrage people and make them angry, even unto
death, the right way to do it is to tell them that they are all the sons of God.
– G. K. Chesterton

Religious and philosophical beliefs are, indeed, as dangerous as fire, and nothing can take from
them that beauty of danger.
– G. K. Chesterton

The materialist’s world is quite simple and solid, just as the madman is quite sure he is sane.
– G. K. Chesterton

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left
untried.
– G. K. Chesterton

Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us
about a million men.
– G. K. Chesterton

In the majority of sane human lives there is no problem of sex at all; there is no problem of
marriage at all; there is no problem of temperament at all; for all these problems are dwarfed
and rendered ridiculous by the standing problem of being a moderately honest man and paying
the butcher.
– G. K. Chesterton

The things we see every day are the things we never see at all.
– G. K. Chesterton

To be born into this earth is to be born into uncongenial surroundings, hence to be born into
a romance.
– G. K. Chesterton

The central idea of poetry is the idea of guessing right, like a child.
– G. K. Chesterton

The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.
– G. K. Chesterton

Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the
world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of
a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is
stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front…
– G. K. Chesterton

The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.
– G. K. Chesterton

The difference between the poet and the mathematician is that the poet tries to get his
head into the heavens while the mathematician tries to get the heavens into his head.
– G. K. Chesterton

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness
doubled by wonder.
– G. K. Chesterton

There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The
other is to desire less.
– G. K. Chesterton

What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but absence of self-criticism.
– G. K. Chesterton

The mind moves by instincts, associations and premonitions and not by fixed dates or
completed processes.
– G. K. Chesterton

A philosopher cannot talk about any single thing, down to a pumpkin, without showing
whether he is wise or foolish; but he can easily talk about everything without anyone having
any views about him, beyond gloomy suspicions.
– G. K. Chesterton

People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.
– G. K. Chesterton

They say travel broadens the mind; but you must have the mind.
– G. K. Chesterton

The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves
what is behind him.
– G. K. Chesterton

Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.
– G. K. Chesterton

A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.
– G. K. Chesterton

Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
– G. K. Chesterton

When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is
incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without
us, into a world we have not made. In other words, when we step into the family we step into
a fairy tale.
– G. K. Chesterton

Once abolish the God and the government becomes the God.
– G. K. Chesterton

A man looking at a hippopotamus may sometimes be tempted to regard a hippopotamus as an
enormous mistake; but he is also bound to confess that a fortunate inferiority prevents him
personally from making such mistakes.
– 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

The only way of catching a train I ever discovered is to miss the train before.
– G. K. Chesterton

People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is
read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is
merely that the novel is more true than they are.
– G. K. Chesterton

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is
an uninterested person.
– G. K. Chesterton

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to
being governed at all.
– G. K. Chesterton

A detective story generally describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. A
modern philosophic story generally describes six dead men discussing how any man can
possibly be alive.
– G. K. Chesterton

In prosperity, our friends know us. In adversity, we know our friends.
– G. K. Chesterton

The truth is that it is our attitude towards children that is right, and our attitude towards
grown-up people that is wrong.
– G. K. Chesterton

The Catholic Church is like a thick steak, a glass of red wine, and a good cigar.
– G. K. Chesterton

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

Merely having an open mind is nothing; the object of opening the mind, as of opening the
mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.
– G. K. Chesterton

Complaint always comes back in an echo from the ends of the world; but silence strengthens
us.
– G. K. Chesterton

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 civilization, what there is particularly immortal about yours?
– G. K. Chesterton

Journalism largely consists in saying “Lord Jones Dead” to people who never knew Lord Jones
was alive.
– G. K. Chesterton

Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not
go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists
very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this
danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.
– G. K. Chesterton

Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical
and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies
in wait.
– G. K. Chesterton

When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven’t got
any.
– G. K. Chesterton

The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother, nature is our sister.
– G. K. Chesterton

We do not need to get good laws to restrain bad people. We need to get good people to
restrain us from bad laws.
– G. K. Chesterton

There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.
– 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.
– G. K. Chesterton

Great truths can only be forgotten and can never be falsified.
– G. K. Chesterton

No man who worships education has got the best out of education. Without a gentle
contempt for education no man’s education is complete.
– G. K. Chesterton

Feminism is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their
employers but slaves when they help their husbands.
– G. K. Chesterton

The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something
solid.
– G. K. Chesterton

One can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place.
– G. K. Chesterton

The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.
– G. K. Chesterton

The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic.
– G. K. Chesterton

The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the
saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the
madman. But the materialist’s world is quite simple and solid, just as the madman is quite sure
he is sane.
– G. K. Chesterton

All things are from God; and above all, reason and imagination and the great gifts of the mind.
They are good in themselves; and we must not altogether forget their origin even in their
perversion.
– G. K. Chesterton

Silence is the unbearbale repartee.
– G. K. Chesterton

I’ve searched all the parks in all the cities – and found no statues of Committees.
– G. K. Chesterton

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore
they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up
person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to
exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that
God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon.
– G. K. Chesterton

Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words
to cover the errors of the rich.
– G. K. Chesterton

Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.
– G. K. Chesterton

When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then
become capable of believing in anything.
– G. K. Chesterton

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

The center of every man’s existence is a dream.
– G. K. Chesterton

If we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need
no other apocalypse.
– G. K. Chesterton

We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity.
– G. K. Chesterton

The philosophy of this world may be founded on facts, but its business is run on spiritual
impressions and atmospheres.
– G. K. Chesterton

Lying in bed would be an altogether supreme experience if one only had a colored pencil long
enough to draw on the ceiling.
– G. K. Chesterton

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and
grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before
sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I
dip the pen in the ink.
– G. K. Chesterton

I entertain a private suspicion that physical sports were much more really effective and
beneficent when they were not taken quite so seriously. One of the first essentials of sport
being healthy is that it should be delightful; it is rapidly becoming a false religion with
austerities and prostrations.
– G. K. Chesterton

All architecture is great architecture after sunset.
– G. K. Chesterton

Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances that we know to be desperate.
– G. K. Chesterton

Fairy tales make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that
they run with water.
– G. K. Chesterton

And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than look down. Without the rain, there
would be no rainbow.
– G. K. Chesterton

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
– G. K. Chesterton

The academic mind reflects infinity, and is full of light by the simple process of being shallow
and standing still.
– G. K. Chesterton

Jesus promised his disciples three things: That they would be completely fearless, absurdly
happy, and in constant trouble.
– G. K. Chesterton

The pure modernist is merely a snob; he cannot bear to be a month behind the fashion.
– G. K. Chesterton

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of
a readiness to die.
– G. K. Chesterton

It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.
– G. K. Chesterton

Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity.
– G. K. Chesterton

A thing may be too sad to be believed or too wicked to be believed or too good to be
believed; but it cannot be too absurd to be believed in this planet of frogs and elephants, of
crocodiles and cuttle-fish.
– G. K. Chesterton

The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.
– G. K. Chesterton

Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.
– G. K. Chesterton

Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any
relation to reality at all.
– G. K. Chesterton

The full potentialities of human fury cannot be reached until a friend of both parties tactfully
intervenes.
– G. K. Chesterton

The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild
and wasted virtues.
– G. K. Chesterton

He is only a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of the
Conservative.
– G. K. Chesterton