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

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Do not free the camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Most Americans are born drunk, and really require a little wine or beer to sober them. They have a sort of permanent intoxication from within, a sort of invisible champagne. Americans do not need to drink to inspire them to do anything, though they do sometimes, I think, need a little for the deeper and more delicate purpose of teaching them how to do nothing.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Psychoanalysis is confession without absolution.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.

— 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

All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims permanence, like a dogma. People ask why we have no typical architecture of the modern world, like impressionism in painting. Surely it is obviously because we have not enough dogmas; we cannot bear to see anything in the sky that is solid and enduring, anything in the sky that does not change like the clouds of the sky.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Soldiers have many faults, but they have one redeeming merit; they are never worshippers of force. Soldiers more than any other men are taught severely and systematically that might is not right. The fact is obvious. The might is in the hundred men who obey. The right (or what is held to be right) is in the one man who commands them.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs. Artists of a large and wholesome vitality get rid of their art easily, as they breathe easily or perspire easily. But in artists of less force, the thing becomes a pressure, and produces a definite pain, which is called the artistic temperament.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In this long vigil he often has to vary his methods of stimulation; but in this long vigil he is also himself striving against a continual tendency to sleep.

— 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

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

A turkey is more occult and awful than all the angels and archangels. In so far as God has partly revealed to us an angelic world, he has partly told us what an angel means. But God has never told us what a turkey means. And if you go and stare at a live turkey for an hour or two, you will find by the end of it that the enigma has rather increased than diminished.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The mere brute pleasure of reading --the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

A yawn is a silent shout.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Boyhood is a most complex and incomprehensible thing. Even when one has been through it, one does not understand what it was. A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been the boy.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

White is not a mere absence of color; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. God paints in many colors; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.

— 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

I believe in getting into hot water. I think it keeps you clean.

— 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

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

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Courage is getting away from death by continually coming within an inch of it.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

It is as healthy to enjoy sentiment as to enjoy jam.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it. The two things that nearly all of us have thoroughly and really been through are childhood and youth. And though we would not have them back again on any account, we feel that they are both beautiful, because we have drunk them dry.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The present condition of fame is merely fashion.

— 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

The timidity of the child or the savage is entirely reasonable; they are alarmed at this world, because this world is a very alarming place. They dislike being alone because it is verily and indeed an awful idea to be alone. Barbarians fear the unknown for the same reason that Agnostics worship it --because it is a fact.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The full value of this life can only be got by fighting; the violent take it by storm. And if we have accepted everything we have missed something -- war. This life of ours is a very enjoyable fight, but a very miserable truce.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

You cannot love a thing without wanting to fight for it.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The golden age only comes to men when they have forgotten gold.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Evil comes at leisure like the disease. Good comes in a hurry like the doctor.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalized.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Their is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.

— 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

To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.

— 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

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

We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Merely having an open mind is nothing; the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

A large section of the intelligentsia seems wholly devoid of intelligence.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

There are no uninteresting things, there are only uninterested people.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The old idea that the joke was not good enough for the company has been superseded by the new aristocratic idea that the company was not worthy of the joke. They have introduced an almost insane individualism into that one form of intercourse which is specially and uproariously communal. They have made even levities into secrets. They have made laughter lonelier than tears.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Journalism consists largely in saying Lord James is dead to people who never knew Lord James was alive.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

People accuse journalism of being too personal; but to me it has always seemed far too impersonal. It is charged with tearing away the veils from private life; but it seems to me to be always dropping diaphanous but blinding veils between men and men. The Yellow Press is abused for exposing facts which are private; I wish the Yellow Press did anything so valuable. It is exactly the decisive individual touches that it never gives; and a proof of this is that after one has met a man a million times in the newspapers it is always a complete shock and reversal to meet him in real life.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Our civilization has decided that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

One may understand the Cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.

— 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

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.

— 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

Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.

— 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

The Museum is not meant either for the wanderer to see by accident or for the pilgrim to see with awe. It is meant for the mere slave of a routine of self-education to stuff himself with every sort of incongruous intellectual food in one indigestible meal.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbor.

— 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

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

They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords. Lords without anger and honor, who dare not carry their swords. They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes; They look at our labor and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

My country wrong or right, is like saying my mother, drunk or sober.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

My country, right or wrong is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying My mother, drunk or sober.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

If the barricades went up in our streets and the poor became masters, I think the priests would escape, I fear the gentlemen would; but I believe the gutters would simply be running with the blood of philanthropists.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Half a truth is better than no politics.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton