Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes:
Coincidences are spiritual puns.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Journalism largely consists of saying ‘Lord Jones is Dead’ to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
A stiff apology is a second insult… The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
White… is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black… God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kid of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
A businessman is the only man who is forever apologizing for his occupation.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.
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
I’ve searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf; is better than a whole loaf.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Being ‘contented’ ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and resigned to living in it; it ought to mean appreciating all there is in such a position.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
With any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain healthy humiliation.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
It is as healthy to enjoy sentiment as to enjoy jam.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.
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
Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Half a truth is better than no politics.
Gilbert K. Chesterton