Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

A tragedy means always a mans struggle with that which is stronger than man.

But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet. Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.

To be simple is the best thing in the world; to be modest is the next best thing. I am not sure about being quiet.

What a glorious garden of wonders the lights of Broadway would be to anyone lucky enough to be unable to read.

People in high life are hardened to the wants and distresses of mankind as surgeons are to their bodily pains.

You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world.

Shouldn't atheist have an equal obligation to explain pleasure in a world of randomness. Where does pleasure come from?

You can't have the family farm without the family.

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.

Big Business and State Socialism are very much alike, especially Big Business.

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

The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice.

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

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?

He may be mad, but there's method in his madness. There nearly always is method in madness. It's what drives men mad, being methodical.

The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.

The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

The only defensible war is a war of defense.

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

There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.

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

With any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain healthy humiliation.

A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.

The men of the clique live together because they have the same kind of soul, and their narrowness is a narrowness of spiritual coherence and contentment, like that which exists in hell . . .

The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs. It is a disease which arises from men no having sufficient power of expression to utter and get rid of the element of art in their being.

The new community which the capitalists are now constructing will be a very complete and absolute community; and one which will tolerate nothing really independent of itself.

A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been a boy.

The modern world... has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything.

Romance is the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure.

A man cannot have the energy to produce good art without having the energy to wish to pass beyond it.

The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable one. The trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite.

Why should ANYTHING go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?

If a man only likes victory he must always come late for the battle.

The danger of loss of faith in God is not that one will believe in nothing, but rather that one will believe in anything.

Wait and see whether the religion of the Servile State is not in every case what I say: the encouragement of small virtues supporting capitalism, the discouragement of the huge virtues that defy it.

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.

There are a great many good people, and a great many sane people here this afternoon. Unfortunately, by a kind of coincidence, all the good people are mad, and all the sane people are wicked.

Tea, although an OrientalIs a gentleman at least;Cocoa is a cad and coward,Cocoa is a vulgar beast.

Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves.

Powerful men who have powerful passions use much of their strength in forging chains for themselves.

The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.

...It's natural to believe in the supernatural. It never feels natural to accept only natural things.

All true friendliness begins with fire and food and drink and the recognition of rain or frost.

I represent the jolly mass of mankind. I am the happy and reckless Christian.

A feminist is someone who loathes being a woman and who dislikes the chief feminine characteristics.

And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine, "I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine."

But they none of them create the psychological conditions in which I first saw, or desired to see, the flower.

But there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.

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

Psychoanalysis is a science conducted by lunatics for lunatics. They are generally concerned with proving that people are irresponsible; and they certainly succeed in proving that some people are