Gilbert Chesterton Quotes & Sayings

The real pleasure-seeking is the combination of luxury and austerity in such a way that the luxury can really be felt. — 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

We must be fond of the world, even in order to change it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things forbidden. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Theology is only thought applied to religion. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Modern science is necessarily a double-edged tool, a tool that cuts both ways ... There is no doubt that a Zeppelin is a wonderful thing; but that did not prevent it from becoming a horrible thing. — 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

There are no new lies, no new heresies. Man is simply not that creative. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Spring never is spring unless it comes too soon. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

Every one on this earth should believe, amid whatever madness or moral failure, that his life and temperament have some object on the earth. Every one on the earth should believe that he has something to give to the world which cannot otherwise be given. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The trouble with Christianity is, not that its failed, but that it's never been tried ... not that it can't remake the world, but that it's difficult. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

At least five times, with the Arian and the Albigensian, with the Humanist skeptic, after Voltaire and after Darwin, the Christian Faith has to all appearance, gone to the dogs? But, in each of these five cases, it was the dog that died. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

[Paradox is] truth standing on its head to gain attention. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Men spoke much in my boyhood about restricted or ruined men of genius: and it was common to say that many a man was a Great Might-Have-Been. To me it's a more solid and startling fact that any man in the street is a Great Might-Not-Have-Been. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The full potentialities of human fury cannot be reached until a friend of both parties tactfully interferes. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall be gloriously surprised. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

What the world wants, what the world is waiting for, is not Modern Poetry or Classical Poetry or Neo-Classical Poetry - but Good Poetry. And the dreadful disreputable doubt, which stirs in my own skeptical mind, is doubt about whether it would really matter much what style a poet chose to write in, in any period, as long as he wrote Good poetry. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

A tragedy means always a mans struggle with that which is stronger than man. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

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. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

If you spell a word wrong you have some temptation to think it wrong. — 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

Literary men are being employed to praise a big business man personally, as men used to praise a king. They not only find political reasons for the commercial schemes that they have done for some time past they also find moral defences for the commercial schemers ... I do resent the whole age of patronage being revived under such absurd patrons; and all poets becoming court poets, under kings that have taken no oath. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

If the world grows to worldly, it can be rebuked by the Church; but if the Church grows to worldly, it cannot be adequately rebuked for worldlyness by the world. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The great misfortune of the modern English is not at all that they are more boastful than other people (they are not); it is that they are boastful about those particular things which nobody can boast of without losing them. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Modern man is educated to understand foreign languages and misunderstand foreigners. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Children are simply human beings who are allowed to do what everyone else really desires to do, as for instance, to fly kites, or when seriously wronged to emit prolonged screams for several minutes. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

We have passed the age of the demagogue, the man who has little to say and says it loud. We have come to the age of the mystagogue or don, the man who has nothing to say, but says it softly and impressively in an indistinct whisper. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

I agree with the realistic Irishman who said he preferred to prophesy after the event. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

A really great person is the person who makes every person feel great. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

A great man knows he is not God, and the greater he is the better he knows it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Coincidence is a spiritual pun. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Marriage is an adventure, like going to war. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

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. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Every remedy is a desperate remedy. Every cure is a miraculous cure. Curing a madman is not arguing with a philosopher; it is casting out a devil. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

I still believe in liberalism today as much as I ever did, but, oh, there was a happy time when I believed in liberals ... — Gilbert K. Chesterton

I have myself a poetical enthusiasm for pigs, and the paradise of my fancy is one where pigs have wings. But it is only men, especially wise men, who discuss whether pigs can fly; we have no particular proof that pigs ever discuss it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Every heresy has been an effort to narrow the Church. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

What we call emancipation is always and of necessity simply the free choice of the soul between one set of limitations and another. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The average man votes below himself; he votes with half a mind or a hundredth part of one. A man ought to vote with the whole of himself, as he worships or gets married. A man ought to vote with his head and heart, his soul and stomach, his eye for faces and his ear for music; also (when sufficiently provoked) with his hands and feet. If he has ever seen a fine sunset, the crimson color of it should creep into his vote. The question is not so much whether only a minority of the electorate votes. The point is that only a minority of the voter votes. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The greatest political storm flutters only a fringe of humanity. But an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children literally alter the destiny of nations. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

When a person has found something which he prefers to life itself, he for the first time has begun to live. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The wine they drink in Paradise
They make in Haute Lorraine. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

It is because artists do not practise, patrons do not patronize, crowds do not assemble to reverently worship the great work of Doing Nothing, that the world has lost its philosophy and even failed to invent a new religion. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never gotten tired of making them — Gilbert K. Chesterton

A society is in decay, final or transitional, when common sense really becomes uncommon. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The average woman is at the head of something with which she can do as she likes; the average man has to obey orders and do nothing else. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

When people talk as if the Crusades were nothing more than an aggressive raid against Islam, they seem to forget in the strangest way that Islam itself was only an aggressive raid against the old and ordered civilization in these parts. I do not say it in mere hostility to the religion of Mahomet; I am fully conscious of many values and virtues in it; but certainly it was Islam that was the invasion and Christendom that was the thing invaded. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

Theology is simply that part of religion that requires brains. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Your next-door neighbor is not a man; he is an environment. He is the barking of a dog; he is the noise of a piano; he is a dispute about a party wall; he is drains that are worse than yours, or roses that are better than yours. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Marriage halves our griefs, doubles our joys, and quadruples our expenses — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Liberty has produced scepticism, and scepticism has destroyed liberty. The lovers of liberty thought they were leaving it unlimited, when they were only leaving it undefined. They thought they were only leaving it undefined, when they were really leaving it undefended. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

I would rather a boy learnt in the roughest school the courage to hit a politician, or gained in the hardest school the learning to refute him - rather than that he should gain in the most enlightened school the cunning to copy him. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

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. — 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

The historic glory of America lies in the fact that it is the one nation that was founded like a church. That is, it was founded on a faith that was not merely summed up after it had exited, but was defined before it existed. — 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

A large section of the intelligentsia seems wholly devoid of intelligence. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

An artist will betray himself by some sort of sincerity. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The martyr endured tortures to affirm his belief in truth but he never asserted his disbelief in torture. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The great intellectual tradition that comes down to us from the past was never interrupted or lost through such trifles as the sack of Rome, the triumph of Attila, or all the barbarian invasions of the Dark Ages. It was lost after the introduction of printing, the discovery of America, the founding of the Royal Society, and all the enlightenment of the Renaissance and the modern world. It was there, if anywhere, that there was lost or impatiently snapped the long thin delicate thread that had descended from distant antiquity; the thread of that unusual human hobby: the habit of thinking. — 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

The most valuable book we can read, about countries we have visited, is that which recalls to us something that we did notice, but did not notice that we noticed. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal man does not amaze. — 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

Men reform a thing by removing the reality from it, and then do not know what to do with the unreality that is left. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

America has a new delicacy, a coarse, rank refinement. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

It is human to err; and the only final and deadly error, among all our errors, is denying that we have ever erred. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Let a man walk ten miles steadily on a hot summer's day along a dusty English road, and he will soon discover why beer was invented. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say. — 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

Students of popular science ... are always insisting that Christianity and Buddhism are very much alike, especially Buddhism. This is generally believed, and I believed it myself until I read a book giving the reasons for it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The unconscious democracy of America is a very fine thing. It is a true and deep and instinctive assumption of the equality of citizens, which even voting and elections have not destroyed. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Faith is always at a disadvantage; it is a perpetually defeated thing which survives all conquerors. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was logic. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Either criticism is no good at all (a very defensible position) or else criticism means saying about an author the very things that would have made him jump out of his boots. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

People seem to fight about things very unsuitable for fighting. They make a frightful noise in support of very quiet things. They knock each other about in the name of very fragile things. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

No man can break any of the Ten Commandments. He can only break himself against them. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

That all war is physically frightful is obvious; but if that were a moral verdict, there would be no difference between a torturer and a surgeon. There are certain intellectuals who are too bright to be content with merely praising peace but who are infuriated by anybody praising war. If no war is possible, all criminality has its chance — Gilbert K. Chesterton

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. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

If I did not believe in God, I should still want my doctor, my lawyer and my banker to do so. — 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

The mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet's; but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatic's. — 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

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

The coziness between church and state is good for the state and bad for the church — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Sticking to one woman is a small price to pay for so much as having seen one woman. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The old assumption of the approximate impossibility of war really rested on a similar assumption about the impossibility of evil-and especially of evil in high places. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Life is serious all the time, but living cannot be. You may have all the solemnity you wish in your neckties, but in anything important (such as sex, death, and religion), you must have mirth or you will have madness. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

I am a journalist and have no earthly motives except curiosity and personal vanity. — Gilbert K. Chesterton