Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes
The strangest whim has seized me ... After all I think I will not hang myself today.
The issue is now clear. It is between light and darkness and everyone must choose his side.
Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.
A small artist is content with art; a great artist is content with nothing except everything.
From the standpoint of any sane person, the present problem of capitalist concentration is not only a question of law, but of criminal law, not to mention criminal lunacy.
The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.
There are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands.
When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it.
The only words that ever satisfied me as describing nature are the terms used in fairy books, charm, spell, enchantment; they express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery.
Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.
There'd be a lot less scandal if people didn't idealize sin and pose as sinners.
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.
The evolutionists seem to know everything about the missing link except the fact that it is missing.
Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it.
I believe your own accent is inimitable, though I shall practice it in my bath.
The simple sense of wonder at the shapes of things, and at their exuberant independence of our intellectual standards and our trivial definitions, is the basis of spirituality.
What we call emancipation is always and of necessity simply the free choice of the soul between one set of limitations and another.
When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.
What life and death may be to a turkey is not my business; but the soul of Scrooge and the body of Cratchit are my business.
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.
There are two kinds of charlatan: the man who is called a charlatan, and the man who really is one. The first is the quack who cures you; the second is the highly qualified person who doesn't.
Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kid of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty.
Modern man is educated to understand foreign languages and misunderstand foreigners.
There is no such thing as Success....That a thing is successful merely means that it is; a millionaire is successful in being a millionaire and a donkey in being a donkey.
Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.
If I did not believe in God, I should still want my doctor, my lawyer and my banker to do so.
There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.
Is ditchwater dull? Naturalists with microscopes have told me that it teems with quiet fun.
That young man with the long, auburn hair and the impudent face - that young man was not really a poet; but surely he was a poem.
Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.
When giving treats to friends or children, give them what they like, emphatically not what is good for them.
Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal man does not amaze.
At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper. . . .
I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it, so I signed up for acting instead.
You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world.
But since he stood for England And knew what England means, Unless you give him bacon You must not give him beans.
Before the Roman came to Rye or out to severn strode, / The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
But there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.
