Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes
A society is in decay, final or transitional, when common sense really becomes uncommon.
Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.
Nothing taken for granted; everything received with gratitude; everything passed on with grace.
I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.
The beautification of the world is not a work of nature, but a work of art, then it involves an artist.
Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.
You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.
The Darwinian movement has made no difference to mankind, except that, instead of talking unphilosophically about philosophy, they now talk unscientifically about science.
Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. Never forget that the devil fell by force of gravity. He who has the faith has the fun.
Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.
It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.
A stiff apology is a second insult... The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.
Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad, but chess players do.
The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world.
Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.
Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.
The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.
Realism is simply Romanticism that has lost its reason...that is its reason for existing.
There is no better test of a man's ultimate chivalry and integrity than how he behaves when he is wrong... A stiff apology is a second insult.
Against a dark sky all flowers look like fireworks. There is something strange about them, at once vivid and secret, like flowers traced in fire in the phantasmal garden of a witch.
the object of a new year is not that we should have a new year, but rather that we should have a new soul.
One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.
No man can break any of the Ten Commandments. He can only break himself against them.
All good men are international. Nearly all bad men are cosmopolitan. If we are to be international we must be national.
The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.
Modern toleration is really a tyranny. It is a tyranny because it is a silence.
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
Thrift is poetic because it is creative; waste is unpoetic because it is waste.
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.
The more we are certain what good is, the more we shall see good in everything.
Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.
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.
When people begin to ignore human dignity, it will not be long before they begin to ignore human rights.