Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

The past is not what it was.

Human anger is a higher thing than what is called divine discontent. For you must be angry with something; but you can be discontented with everything.

There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.

The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.

We lose our bearings entirely by speaking of the 'lower classes' when we mean humanity minus ourselves.

Whatever else we may say of our own age, for good or evil, nobody is likely to call it an Age of Reason.

Comradeship is quite a different thing from friendship. . .

Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags.

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.

Christendom has had a series of revolutions and in each one of them Christianity has died. Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.

Atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas . . . for it is the assertion of a universal negative.

One elephant having a trunk was odd; but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot.

In Catholicism, the pint, the pipe and the Cross can all fit together.

The whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a perpetual crisis.

The Universe is the most extraordinary masterpiece ever constructed by nobody.

Being a success at work is not worth it if it means being a failure at home.

All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive.

Forms of expression always appear turgid to those who do not share the emotions they represent.

The simplification of anything is always sensational.

We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.

A sober man may become a drunkard through being a coward. A brave man may become a coward through being a drunkard.

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

A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed.

The scientific facts, which were supposed to contradict the faith in the nineteenth century, are nearly all of them regarded as unscientific fictions in the twentieth century.

Employers will give time to eat, time to sleep; they are in terror of a time to think.

Original sin is the only doctrine that's been empirically validated by 2,000 years of human history.

You don't want to be so open minded that your brains fall out!

Wit is a sword; it is meant to make people feel the point as well as see it.

Hell is God's great compliment to the reality of human freedom and the dignity of human choice.

The triangle of truisms, of father, mother and child, cannot be destroyed; it can only destroy those civilizations which disregard it.

If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.

The woman does not work because the man tells her to work and she obeys. On the contrary, the woman works because she has told the man to work and he hasn’t obeyed.

A man cannot be wise enough to be a great artist without being wise enough to wish to be a philosopher.

[Fairy tales] make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.

There must be some good in the life of battle, for so many good men have enjoyed being soldiers.

Democracy is like blowing your nose. You may not do it well, but it's something you ought to do yourself.

Those thinkers who cannot believe in any gods often assert that the love of humanity would be in itself sufficient for them; and so, perhaps, it would, if they had it.

When you with velvets mantled o'er, Defy December's tempests frore, Oh! spare one garment from your store, To clothe the poor at Christmas.

No sceptical philosopher can ask any questions that may not equally be asked by a tired child on a hot afternoon.

All that we call spirit and art and ecstacy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forgot.

Art is born when the temporary touches the eternal.

Dear Sir: Regarding your article 'What's Wrong with the World?' I am. Yours truly.

There should be a burnished tablet let into the ground on the spot where some courageous man first ate Stilton cheese, and survived.

Truths turn into dogmas the minute they are disputed.

It is the beginning of all true criticism of our time to realize that it has really nothing to say, at the very moment when it has invented so tremendous a trumpet for saying it.

I agree with the realistic Irishman who said he preferred to prophesy after the event.

There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob.

The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

We should thank God for beer and burgundy by not drinking too much of them.

I may not practice what I preach but God forbid I should preach what I practice