Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes & Sayings

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. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

What is called matriarchy is simply moral anarchy, in which the mother alone remains fixed because all the fathers are fugitive and irresponsible. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The diseased pride [of artistic individualists] was not even conscious of a public interest, and would have found all political terms utterly tasteless and insignificant. It was no longer a question of one man one vote, but of one man one universe. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The sort of man who admires Italian art while despising Italian religion is a tourist and a cad. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a perpetual crisis. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Acceptance is the truest kinship with humanity. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

A third-class carriage is a community, while a first-class carriage is a place of wild hermits. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Wherever there is animal worship, there is human sacrifice. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Nothing is so remote from us as the thing which is not old enough to be history and not new enough to be news. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Why be something to everybody when you can be everything to somebody? — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Though I believe in liberalism, I find it difficult to believe in liberals. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

To mix science up with philosophy is only to produce a philosophy that has lost all its ideal value and a science that has lost all its practical value. It is for my private physician to tell me whether this or that food will kill me. It is for my private philosopher to tell me whether I ought to be killed. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Research is the search of people who don't know what they want. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

I like the Americans for a great many reasons. I like them because even the modern thing called industrialism has not entirely destroyed in them the very ancient thing called democracy. I like them because they have a respect for work which really curbs the human tendency to snobbishness. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Faith means believing the unbelievable. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

A small artist is content with art; a great artist is content with nothing except everything. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

In Catholicism, the pint, the pipe and the Cross can all fit together. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The highest and noblest thing that history can be is a good story. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Nothing taken for granted; everything received with gratitude; everything passed on with grace. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

I am not fighting a hopeless fight. People who have fought in real fights don't, as a rule. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Plato was only a Bernard Shaw who unfortunately made his jokes in Greek. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

It's not that we don't have enough scoundrels to curse; it's that we don't have enough good men to curse them. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

A sober man may become a drunkard through being a coward. A brave man may become a coward through being a drunkard. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

[Consider] a fence or gate erected across a road] The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it." — Gilbert K. Chesterton

We're all in the same boat, and we're all seasick. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

No man can be merry unless he is serious. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

It is still bad taste to be an avowed atheist. But now it is equally bad taste to be an avowed Christian. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

[V]ariety of climate should always go with stability of abode ... an Englishman's house is not only his castle; it is his fairy castle. Clouds and colours of every varied dawn and eve are perpetually touching and turning it from clay to gold, or from gold to ivory. There is a line of woodland beyond a corner of my garden which is literally different on every one of the three hundred and sixty-five days. Sometimes it seems as near as a hedge, and sometimes as far as a faint and fiery evening cloud. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

To do Mohammed justice, his main attack was against the idolatries of Asia. Only he thought, just as the Arians did and just as the Unitarians do, that he could attack them better with a greater approximation to plain theism. What distinguishes his heresy from anything like an Arian or Albigensian heresy is that, as it sprang up on the borders of Christendom, it could spread outwards to a barbaric world. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Earth will grow worse till men redeem it, And wars more evil, ere all wars cease. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

All men are ordinary men; the extraordinary men are those who know it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

English experience indicates that when the two great political parties agree about something it is generally wrong. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

And they that rule in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they have no graves as yet. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The sceptic ultimately undermines democracy (1) because he can see no significance in death and such things of a literal equality; (2) because he introduces different first principles, making debate impossible: and debate is the life of democracy; (3) because the fading of the images of sacred persons leaves a man too prone to be a respecter of earthly persons; (4) because there will be more, not less, respect for human rights if they can be treated as divine rights. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

A man making the confession of any creed worth ten minutes' intelligent talk, is always a man who gains something and gives up something. So long as he does both he can create; for he is making an outline and a shape. Mohamet created, when he forbade wine but allowed five wives: he created a very big thing, which we have still to deal with. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

I will praise the English climate till I die - even if I die of the English climate. There is no weather so good as English weather. Nay, in a real sense there is no weather at all anywhere but in England. In France you have much sun and some rain; in Italy you have hot winds and cold winds; in Scotland and Ireland you have rain, either thick or thin; in America you have hells of heat and cold, and in the Tropics you have sunstrokes varied by thunderbolts. But all these you have on a broad and brutal scale, and you settle down into contentment or despair. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

I've been to every park in every city and not seen a statue to a committee. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

It is unpardonable conceit not to laugh at your own jokes. Joking is undignified; that is why it is so good for one's soul. Do not fancy you can be a detached wit and avoid being a buffoon; you cannot. If you are the Court Jester you must be the Court Fool. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

O God of earth and altar,
Bow down and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die;
The walls of gold entomb us,
The swords of scorn divide,
Take not thy thunder from us,
But take away our pride. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Then I only wondered who put the toys in the stocking; now I wonder who put the stocking by the bed, and the bed in the room, and the room in the house, and the house on the planet, and the great planet in the void. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Instead of looking at books and pictures about the New Testament I looked at the New Testament. There I found an account, not in the least of a person with his hair parted in the middle or his hands clasped in appeal, but of an extraordinary being with lips of thunder and acts of lurid decision, flinging down tables, casting out devils, passing with the wild secrecy of the wind from mountain isolation to a sort of dreadful demagogy; a being who often acted like an angry god - and always like a god. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Being a success at work is not worth it if it means being a failure at home. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

If our caricaturists do not hate their enemies, it is not because they are too big to hate them, but because their enemies are not big enough to hate. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The noble temptation to see too much in everything. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

'As you have made your bed, so you must lie on it'; which again is simply a lie. If I have made my bed uncomfortable, please God I will make it again. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

We do not want, as the newspapers say, a church that will move with the world. We want a church that will move the world. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Pride juggles with her toppling towers, They strike the sun and cease, But the firm feet of humility They grip the ground like trees. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Men rush toward complexity; but yearn for simplicity. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

A faith is that which is able to survive a mood. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

It seems a pity that psychology has destroyed all our knowledge of human nature. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

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

We have had no good comic operas of late, because the real world has been more comic than any possible opera. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

We all have a little weakness, which is very natural but rather misleading, for supposing that this epoch must be the end of the world because it will be the end of us. How future generations will get on without us is indeed, when we come to think of it, quite a puzzle. But I suppose they will get on somehow, and may possibly venture to revise our judgments as we have revised earlier judgments. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

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. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

They say travel broadens the mind, but you must have the mind. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The thing that cannot be defined is the first thing; the primary fact. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

I am myself so exceedingly Nordic, as far as physical constitution is concerned, that I can enjoy almost any weather except what is called glorious weather. At the end of a few days, I am left wondering how the men of the Mediterranean ever managed to do almost all the most active and astonishing things that have been done. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

[Marxism will] in a generation or so [go] into the limbo of most heresies, but meanwhile it will have poisoned the Russian Revolution. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The prophet and the quack are alike admired for a generation, and admired for the wrong reasons. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Gratitude produced the most purely joyful moments that have been known to man. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The position we have now reached is this: starting from the State, we try to remedy the failures of all the families, all the nurseries, all the schools, all the workshops, all the secondary institutions that once had some authority of their own. Everything is ultimately brought into the Law Courts. We are trying to stop the leak at the other end. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Now, among the heresies that are spoken in this matter is the habit of calling a grey day a "colourless" day. Grey is a colour, and can be a very powerful and pleasing colour ... A grey clouded sky is indeed a canopy between us and the sun; so is a green tree, if it comes to that. But the grey umbrellas differ as much as the green in their style and shape, in their tint and tilt. One day may be grey like steel, and another grey like dove's plumage. One may seem grey like the deathly frost, and another grey like the smoke of substantial kitchens. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

A great classic means a man whom one can praise without having read. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Nobody notices postmen, yet they have passions like other men. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kid of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

A great curse has fallen upon modern life with the discovery of the vastness of the word Education. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

There are many definite methods, honest and dishonest, which make people rich; the only instinct I know of which does it is that instinct which theological Christianity crudely describes as the sin of avarice. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Surprise is the secret of joy. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Catholicism is not ritualism; it may in the future be fighting some sort of superstitious and idolatrous exaggeration of ritual. Catholicism is not asceticism; it has again and again in the past repressed fanatical and cruel exaggerations of asceticism. Catholicism is not mere mysticism; it is even now defending human reason against the mere mysticism of the Pragmatists. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

A man cannot be wise enough to be a great artist without being wise enough to wish to be a philosopher. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Our society is so abnormal that the normal man never dreams of having the normal occupation of looking after his own property. When he chooses a trade, he chooses one of the ten thousand trades that involve looking after other people's property. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Nine times out of ten it is the coarse word that condemns an evil, and the refined word that excuses it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

People that insist upon drinking and driving, are putting the quart before the hearse. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

A great man is not a man so strong that he feels less than other men; he is a man so strong that he feels more. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

All real democracy is an attempt like that of a jolly hostess to bring the shy people out. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

It is the chief value of legend to mix up the centuries while preserving the sentiment. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The poetry of art is in beholding the single tower; the poetry of nature in seeing the single tree; the poetry of love in following the single woman; the poetry of religion in worshipping the single star. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

No animal ever invented anything as bad as drunkenness - or so good as drink. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The decay of society is praised by artists as the decay of a corpse is praised by worms. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The determining bulk of Scotch people had heard of golf ever since they had heard of God and often considered the two as of equal importance. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The professional soldier gains more and more power as the general courage of a community declines. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Precisely because our political speeches are meant to be reported, they are not worth reporting. Precisely because they are carefully designed to be read, nobody reads them. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

In every serious doctrine of the destiny of men, there is some trace of the doctrine of the equality of men. But the capitalist really depends on some religion of inequality. The capitalist must somehow distinguish himself from human kind; he must be obviously above it or he would be obviously below it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The world will very soon be divided, unless I am mistaken, into those who still go on explaining our success, and those somewhat more intelligent who are trying to explain our failure. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Nothing can ever overcome that one enormous sex (female) superiority that even the male child is born closer to his mother than to his father. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Any one of the strange laws we suffer is a compromise between a fad and a vested interest. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

If it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly. (on not perfectionism to put things off) . — Gilbert K. Chesterton