Top 1337 Quotes & Sayings by Gilbert K. Chesterton - Page 2
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English writer Gilbert K. Chesterton.
Last updated on December 21, 2024.
A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over... is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.
If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.
New roads; new ruts.
Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.
Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.
There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.
If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.
There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.
Women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes.
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.
Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.
I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.
I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it, so I signed up for acting instead.
A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.
The mere brute pleasure of reading the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.
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.
The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men.
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.
Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.
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.
Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.
The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.
The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.
Some men never feel small, but these are the few men who are.
All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.
Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.
Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.
Half a truth is better than no politics.
No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete.
If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.
Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.
An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.
It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.
Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
The only defensible war is a war of defense.
The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything.
Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?
Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.
Large organization is loose organization. Nay, it would be almost as true to say that organization is always disorganization.
Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kid of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty.
Journalism largely consists of saying 'Lord Jones is Dead' to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.
Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt.
A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching.
The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.
People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.
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.
You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.
A radical generally meant a man who thought he could somehow pull up the root without affecting the flower. A conservative generally meant a man who wanted to conserve everything except his own reason for conserving anything.
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.
It is as healthy to enjoy sentiment as to enjoy jam.
Coincidences are spiritual puns.
With any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain healthy humiliation.
How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.
Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.
The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense.
The only way to be sure of catching a train is to miss the one before it.
Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young.
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