G. K. Chesterton Quotes (136 Quotes)

You have weighed the stars in the balance, and grasped the skies in a span; Take, if you must have answer, the word of a common man.

The first of all democratic doctrines is that all men are interesting.

The noble temptation to see too much in everything.

Fools For I also had my hour; One far fierce hour and sweet; There was a shout about my ears, And palms before my feet.

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.

Merrily taking twopenny ale and cheese with a pocket knife; But these were luxuries not for him who went for the Simple Life.

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.

Nonsense is a kind of exuberant capering round a discovered truth.

But there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen; Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.

A great deal of contemporary criticism reads to me like a man saying Of course I do not like green cheese I am very fond of brown sherry.'

Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long as you have one good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem.

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

A man who has faith must be prepared not only to be a martyr, but to be a fool.

Adventure is the champagne of life.

The Museum is not meant 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. . .

Poets do not go mad, but chess players do.

Literature has always been allegorical.

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.

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.

Your next-door neighbour. . . is not a man he is an environment. He is the barking of a dog he is the noise of a pianola he is a dispute about a party wall he is drains that are worse than yours, or roses that are better than yours.

Men that are men again; who goes home?

Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any realtion to reality at all.

Education is the period during which I was being instructed by somebody I did not know, about something I did not want to know.

To say that a man is an idealist is merely to say that he is a man.

If an angel out of heaven; Brings you other things to drink, Thank him for his kind attentions, Go and pour them down the sink.

Materialists and madmen never have doubts.

The lunatic is the man who lives in a small world but thinks it is a large one he is the man who lives in a tenth of the truth, and thinks it is the whole. The madman cannot conceive any cosmos outside a certain tale or conspiracy or vision.

And goodness only knowses; The Noselessness of Man.

Mr Shaw is (I suspect) the only man on earth who has never written any poetry.

A man's opinion on tramcars matters his opinion on Botticelli matters his opinion on all things does not matter.

Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit.

Architecture is the alphabet of giants it is the largest set of symbols ever made to meet the eyes of men.

Carlyle said that men were mostly fools. Christianity, with a surer and more reverend realism, says that they are all fools.

The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. The really sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman.

Literature and fiction are two entirely different things. Literature is a luxury fiction is a necessity.

The Nothing scrawled on a five-foot page.

I do not cry, beloved, neither curse.

It is at unimportant moments that a man is a gentleman. At important moments he ought to be something better.

Among the Very Rich you will never find a really generous man, even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away they are egoistic, secretive, dry as old bones.

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.

They haven't got no noses The fallen sons of Eve Even the smell of roses Is not what they supposes But more than mind discloses And more than men believe.

THE UNIVERSE The most exquisite masterpiece ever composed by nobody.

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

An artist will betray himself by some sort of sincerity.

No man knows he is young while he is young.

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

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 strangest whim has seized me . . . After all I think I will not hang myself today.

As enunciated today, 'progress' is simply a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative.

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 worshiping the single star.