[Buddhism and Christianity] are in one sense parallel and equal; as a mound and a hollow, as a valley and a hill. There is a sense in which that sublime despair is the only alternative to that divine audacity. It is even true that the truly spiritual and intellectual man sees it as sort of dilemma; a very hard and terrible choice. There is little else on earth that can compare with these for completeness. And he who does not climb the mountain of Christ does indeed fall into the abyss of Buddha.


G.K. Chesterton

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ...
KELLY JONES
Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you...
C. JOYBELL C.
I believe that there is a Matrix and... to be more accurate I am in the Pornography Matrix.
DEYTH BANGER
She was scarcely a year older than I was, dark-haired, slender, with a face that would break your he...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN
You're still lovely," Mor said a bit gently.
Elain offered a half smile. "I suppose that war m...
SARAH J. MAAS
It is a lie.
ARTHUR MILLER
I realized that day that blessings come in a variety of shapes, colors, and sizes.
CRAIG GROESCHEL
The issue isn't whether he loved you, it's how much. Too much. Love can be poison
SARAH J. MAAS
I am broken and healing, but every piece of my heart belong to you.
SARAH J. MAAS
He thinks he'll be remembered as the villain in the story. But I forgot to tell him that the villain...
SARAH J. MAAS
Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold ...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN
Hodor," said Hodor.
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN
You do what you love, what you need
SARAH J. MAAS
I turned.
Rhysand leaned against the archway into the sitting room, arms crossed, wings nowhere...
SARAH J. MAAS
To stand on the
brink of what is coming, feeling eager, optimistic anticipation—with no feeli...
ASK AND IT IS GIVEN
History is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging. What has happened before will...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN
Life is not a game. Still, in this life, we choose the games we live to play.
J.R. RIM
His life seemed like a deck of cards, and in the midst of all those two’s and three’s someone ha...
TEKOA MANNING
I wish I was home", She said miserably.
She tried so hard to be brave,
to be fierce as a...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN
When a lot of voices, make up a noise, the man who is silent represents a voice.
APURVA GAGLANI
She made a fence of phrases, which seemed a treachery to herself.
ELIZABETH TAYLOR
You are the blood of the dragon. You can make a hat.
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN
Absoballylutely top hole, wot. A and B the C of D I'd say. . . Above and Beyond the Call of Duty.
BRIAN JACQUES
I want to share this bed with you, though," I breathed. "I want you to hold me."
Stars flicker...
SARAH J. MAAS
I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing ...
JOHN MUIR
You release the pain of the past and press on. It's a new day, and God is doing a new thing. He want...
CRAIG GROESCHEL
Mother Superior jump the gun...
-The Beatles, Happiness is a Warm Gun
LAUREN MYRACLE
The Biggest Threat to our Democracy, Freedoms and Future is Leadership that fosters and Appeases the...
MICHAEL HARRIS
(All the grief she had suffered over her lifetime had moulded her face into a mask of eternal sadnes...
JEAN SASSON
Each man lives in his own universe and when he dies the world is over
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA
Because death is the only thing that could have ever kept him from you.
ALLY CARTER
I was not a pet, not a doll, not an animal.
I was a survivor, and I was strong.
I would no...
SARAH J. MAAS
I sipped from my wine. "And if he had grabbed me?"

There was nothing but uncompromising w...
SARAH J. MAAS
There you are. I've been looking for you.

His first words to me— not a lie at a...
SARAH J. MAAS
I was not prey any longer, I decided as I eased up to that door.
And I was not a mouse.
I ...
SARAH J. MAAS
No one was my master— but I might be master of everything, if I wished. If I dared.
SARAH J. MAAS
He drained his glass. "I made a mistake."
"It's not the end of the world if you do that every n...
SARAH J. MAAS
I will kill anyone who harms you," Rhys snarled. "I will kill them, and take a damn long time doing ...
SARAH J. MAAS
Julia poured tea gracefully, but it all ran over into the saucers.
ELIZABETH TAYLOR
The next day, the villages came closer together until the beginnings and endings could no longer be ...
PATRICK W. CARR
It appeared to Harriet that she was always the one who remembered having seen other people. They nev...
ELIZABETH TAYLOR
Would you like me to grovel with gratitude for bringing me here, High Lord?"
"Ah. The Suriel to...
SARAH J. MAAS
Look to your heart and soul first, rather than looking to your head first, when choosing. Rather tha...
JEFFREY R. ANDERSON
For starters, that’s a rather simple principle of Time Travel right there – and according to the...
CHRISTINA ENGELA
A servant who serves excellently from his whole heart with due courage and humility is never a serva...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
This world is a peaceful stage where we are all villains of this drama and trees are the heroes.
DEBASISH MRIDHA
That boy had wanted to be Ser Arthur Dayne, but someplace along the way he had become the Smiling Kn...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN
I frowned at the eye in my palm. "What, literally shout at the tattoo?"
"You could try rubbing ...
SARAH J. MAAS
You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.
HENRY JAMES
Grin when you win and others will do the same to you. And it will not rest with either.
JAIME CONTRERAS
I'm fucking the grave, I thought, I'm bringing the dead back to life...
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
why do people rise and fall.. How and when they will get the attentions and why politicians fall whe...
SHARIF MOHAMED
I began by saying that our history will be what we make it. If we go on as we are, then history will...
EDWARD R. MURROW
It was a comet. The boy saw the comet and he felt as though his life had meaning. And when it went a...
LUCAS SCOTT
Plunging in “truths” about God is like walking on the bottom of a sea that is not there, searchi...
MARIANA FULGER
The battle is not physical, it is spiritual and your mind is the battleground. Keep your mind pure a...
JEANETTE CORON
Life is a re-discovery.
BRIAN BLESSED
If you think that life is a celebration full of party poppers and merry go rounds it's not it's a ga...
GARY F EVANS...
Life Is a Misconception.
DEYTH BANGER
Life is a desire!
DEYTH BANGER
To trust someone you must firstly remember that it is a two way street that will go all the way if y...
GARY F EVANS...
Matty blinked. 'You're passing up whips for shopping?'
'You're bitching about ...
LETA BLAKE
Language is my whore, my mistress, my wife, my pen-friend, my check-out girl. Language is a complime...
STEPHEN FRY
To the people who look at the stars and wish, Rhys."
Rhys clinked his glass against mine. “To...
SARAH J. MAAS
Males are horrible creatures, aren’t they?
SARAH J. MAAS
When you spend so long trapped in darkness, you find that the darkness begins to stare back.
SARAH J. MAAS
Many atrocities, have been done in the name of the greater good.
SARAH J. MAAS
Aemon’s blind white eyes came open. “Egg?” he said, as the rain streamed down his cheeks. “E...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN
But I forgot to tell him,” I said quietly, opening the door, “that the villain is usually the pe...
SARAH J. MAAS
Here is one fact 1 minute to finish the class, 1 day to die, one day behind that fact, one day in th...
DEYTH BANGER
When a man undergoes treatment from a doctor, he does not need to know the way in which the drug wor...
WILLIAM BARCLAY
A mother isn’t the person who births you; it’s the person who rears you and shows you love.
RAQUEL CEPEDA
Beaming into the thick of a tree without becoming a lifelong tree hugger was a tricky business. A pr...
CHRISTINA ENGELA
Be grateful for every moment and every breath.
TERESA COLLINS
He wanted to argue like this forever. This was better than nothing. There was no exhausting his ange...
DAVID DUCHOVNY
Daring to dream is not difficult, it's making them come true that is hard...
NANETTE L. AVERY
Swift as a deer. Quiet as a shadow. Fear cuts deeper than swords. Quick as a snake. Calm as still wa...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN
You know nothing, Jon Snow.
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN
Kehidupan perempuan itu sembilan bagian kacau dan satu bagian ajaib, kau akan segera mengetahuinya.....
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN
Jaime smiled knowingly. Men will read all sorts of things into a knowing smile if you let them.
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN
Only fools wait, and only tools bait.
CRE
There are approximately two trillion cells in the human body. You are never alone, there are always ...
DWIGHT W. HAYES
She wasn't bitter. She was sad, though. But it was a hopeful kind of sad. The kind of sad that just ...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY
So, I guess we are who we are for alot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY
I love my mom so much. I don't care if that's corny to say. I think on my next birthday, I'm going t...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY
We Are All Infinite
STEPHEN CHBOSKY
You can't just sit there and put everyone's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You ...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY
I saw other people there. Old men sitting alone. Young girls with blue eye shadow and awkward jaws. ...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY
That one moment when you know you are not a sad story. You are ALIVE.
STEPHAN CHBOSKY
Somos quienes somos por un montón de razones.Quizás nunca conozcamos la mayoría de ellas.Pero aun...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY
Ambos dijeron que tomara asiento y parecían hablar en serio, así que me senté.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY
I know these will all be stories some day, and our pictures will become old photographs. We all beco...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY
So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybewe'll never know most of them.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY
So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY
There's nothing like the deep breathes after laughing that hard. Nothing in the world like a sore st...
STHEPHEN CHBOSKY
no more pencils, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks, when the teacher rings the bell, drop...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY
I don't know the significance of this, but I find it very interesting.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY
Maybe it’s sad that these are now memories. And maybe it’s not sad.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY
Oh, I should probably set a few ground rules before we do this.”
“Oh?” I turn at the wais...
J.A. REDMERSKI
Commemoration of Martyrs of Papua New Guinea, 1942 It is fatally easy to think of Christianity as...
WILLIAM BARCLAY

More G.K. Chesterton

Divinity is great enough to be divine; it is great enough to call itself divine. But as humanity gro...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Are you a devil?"
"I am a man," answered Father Brown gravely; "and therefore have all devils i...
G.K. CHESTERTON
For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.
G.K. CHESTERTON
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untr...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic.
G.K. CHESTERTON
Who would condescend to strike down the mere things that he does not
fear? Who would debase him...
G.K. CHESTERTON
If we are bound to improve, we need not trouble to improve. The pure doctrine of progress is the bes...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long a...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally t...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
G.K. CHESTERTON
The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.
G.K. CHESTERTON
We men and women are all in the same boat, upon a stormy sea. We owe to each other a terrible and tr...
G.K. CHESTERTON
If you happen to read fairy tales, you will observe that one idea runs from one end of them to the o...
G.K. CHESTERTON
There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wron...
G.K. CHESTERTON
I am not absentminded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.
G.K. CHESTERTON
A tragey means always a man's struggle with that which is stronger than man.
G.K. CHESTERTON
Realism is simply Romanticism that has lost its reason...that is its reason for existing.
G.K. CHESTERTON
The word "good" has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of...
G.K. CHESTERTON
There's a lot of difference between listening and hearing.
G.K. CHESTERTON
Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.
G.K. CHESTERTON
Now the best relation to our spiritual home is to be near enough to love it. But the next best is to...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Science must not impose any philosophy, any more than the telephone must tell us what to say.
G.K. CHESTERTON
There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to de...
G.K. CHESTERTON
We do not need to get good laws to restrain bad people. We need to get good people to restrain us fr...
G.K. CHESTERTON
We have all read in scientific books, and, indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has for...
G.K. CHESTERTON
A pickpocket is obviously a champion of private enterprise. But it would perhaps be an exaggeration ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.
G.K. CHESTERTON
Nine times out of ten a man’s broad-mindedness is necessarily the narrowest thing about him. This ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
We have never even begun to understand a people until we have found something that we do not underst...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Through all this ordeal his root horror had been isolation, and there are no words to express the ab...
G.K. CHESTERTON
There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to...
G.K. CHESTERTON
White is not a mere absence of color; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as de...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is b...
G.K. CHESTERTON
They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians....
G.K. CHESTERTON
Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances that we know to be desperate.
G.K. CHESTERTON
The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry, and al...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Just at present you only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the...
G.K. CHESTERTON
If it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly. (on not perfectionism to put things off) .
G.K CHESTERTON
An adventure is only an inconvenience, rightly considered.
G.K CHESTERTON
Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.
G.K CHESTERTON
I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.
G.K CHESTERTON
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and do...
G.K CHESTERTON
How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.
G.K CHESTERTON
To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labours, and holidays; to be...
G.K. CHESTERTON
In prosperity, our friends know us. In adversity, we know our friends
G.K. CHESTERTON
Happiness is a state of the soul; a state in which our natures are full of the wine of an ancient yo...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable. Never drink when you are wretched ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.
G.K. CHESTERTON
I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is r...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Therefore I see no wrong in riding with the Nightmare to-night; she whinnies to me from the rocking ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinar...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Another savage trait of our time is the disposition to talk about material substances instead of abo...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relat...
G.K. CHESTERTON
According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in m...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.
G.K. CHESTERTON
A Second Childhood.”

When all my days are ending
And I have no song to sing,
...
G.K. CHESTERTON
If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despot...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.
G.K. CHESTERTON
It [feminism] is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers bu...
G.K. CHESTERTON
I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
G.K. CHESTERTON
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
G.K. CHESTERTON
Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.
G.K. CHESTERTON
To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believi...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Modern art has to be what is called ‘intense.’ it is not easy to define being intense; but, roug...
G.K. CHESTERTON
It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.
G.K. CHESTERTON
Through all this ordeal his root horror had been isolation, and there are no words to express the ab...
G.K. CHESTERTON
But when first the two black dragons sprang out of the fog upon the small clerk, they had merely th...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Monotony has nothing to do with a place; monotony, either in its sensation or its infliction, is sim...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.
G.K. CHESTERTON
The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.
G.K. CHESTERTON
A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.
G.K. CHESTERTON
There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
G.K. CHESTERTON
When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
If there were no God, there would be no atheists.
G.K. CHESTERTON
I have little doubt that when St. George had killed the dragon he was heartily afraid of the princes...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The woman does not work because the man tells her to work and she obeys. On the contrary, the woman ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity c...
G.K. CHESTERTON
In the struggle for existence, it is only on those who hang on for ten minutes after all is hopeless...
G.K. CHESTERTON
I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. Th...
G.K. CHESTERTON
That is the one eternal education: to be sure enough that something is true that you dare to tell it...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The man who kills a man kills a man.
The man who kills himself kills all men.
As far as he...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The things we see every day are the things we never see at all.
G.K. CHESTERTON
When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become c...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister.
G.K. CHESTERTON
We should always endeavor to wonder at the permanent thing, not at the mere exception. We should be ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.
G.K. CHESTERTON
But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore h...
G.K. CHESTERTON
We fear men so much, because we fear God so little. One fear cures another. When man's terror scares...
G.K. CHESTERTON
There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there.
G.K. CHESTERTON
Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.
G.K. CHESTERTON
It may well be on such a night of clouds and cruel colors that there is brought forth upon the earth...
G.K. CHESTERTON
It was his home now. But it could not be his home till he had gone from it and returned to it. Now h...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The Catholic Church is like a thick steak, a glass of red wine, and a good cigar.
G.K. CHESTERTON
A man must be prepared not only to be a martyr, but to be a fool. It is absurd to say that a man is ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is mor...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The modern mind is forced towards the future by a certain sense of fatigue, not unmixed with terror,...
G.K. CHESTERTON
People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read mor...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Among the rich you will never find a really generous man even by accident. They may give their money...
G.K. CHESTERTON
All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The difference between the poet and the mathematician is that the poet tries to get his head into th...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Coincidences are spiritual puns.
G.K. CHESTERTON
This man's spiritual power has been precisely this, that he has distinguished between custom and cre...
G.K. CHESTERTON
There again," said Syme irritably, "what is there poetical about being in revolt? You might as well ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The most poetical thing in the world is not being sick.
G.K. CHESTERTON
The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
G.K. CHESTERTON
I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness double...
G.K. CHESTERTON
...but this is the real objection to that torrent of modern talk about treating crime as disease, ab...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Think of all those ages through which men have had the courage to die, and then remember that we hav...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Thrift is poetic because it is creative; waste is unpoetic because it is waste.
G.K. CHESTERTON
The future is a blank wall on which every man can write his own name as large as he likes; the past ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The more truly we can see life as a fairytale, the more clearly the tale resolves itself into war wi...
G.K. CHESTERTON
It is quite easy to see why a legend is treated, and ought to be treated, more respectfully than a b...
G.K. CHESTERTON
I always like a dog so long as he isn't spelled backward.
G.K. CHESTERTON
She(Joan of Arc) put her dreams and her sentiment into her aims, where they ought to be; she put her...
G.K. CHESTERTON
In the glad old days, before the rise of modern morbidities...it used to be thought a disadvantage t...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Modern tragic writers have to write short stories; if they wrote long stories…cheerfulness would c...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.
G.K. CHESTERTON
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
G.K. CHESTERTON
... just as when we see a pig in a litter larger than the other pigs, we know that by an unalterable...
G.K. CHESTERTON
And it did certainly appear that the prophets had put the people (engaged in the old game of Cheat t...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Then the small man suddenly ran after them and said:
"I want to get my haircut. I say, do you k...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Adam Wayne, the conqueror, with his face flung back and his mane like a lion's, stood with his great...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Cooking is an art; it has in it personality, and even perversity, for the definition of an art is th...
G.K. CHESTERTON
I can only put it sufficiently curtly in a careless simile. A Socialist means a man who thinks a wal...
G.K. CHESTERTON
In the lower classes the school master does not work for the parent, but against the parent. Modern ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The only persons who seem to have nothing to do with the education of the children are the parents.
G.K. CHESTERTON
We have actually contrived to invent a new kind of hypocrite. The old hypocrite, Tartuffe or Pecksni...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Now I have no notion at all of propounding a new ideal. There is no new ideal imaginable by the madn...
G.K. CHESTERTON
If you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will have no answer ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
There are, I believe, some who still deny that England is governed by an oligarchy. It is quite enou...
G.K. CHESTERTON
But of all the instances of error arising from this physical fancy, the worst is that we have before...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Thrift is the really romantic thing; economy is more romantic than extravagance... But the thing is ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
A head can be beaten small enough until it fits the hat.
G.K. CHESTERTON
No one has even begun to understand comradeship who does not accept with it a certain hearty eagerne...
G.K. CHESTERTON
No one has even begun to understand comradeship who does not accept with it a certain hearty eagerne...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Men have not got tired of Christianity; they have never found enough Christianity to get tired of. M...
G.K. CHESTERTON
It is very currently suggested that the modern man is the heir of all the ages, that he has got the ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Thrift is poetic because it is creative.
G.K. CHESTERTON
The chicken does not exist only in order to produce another egg. He may also exist to amuse himself,...
G.K. CHESTERTON
No man demands what he desires; each man demands what he fancies he can get. Soon people forget what...
G.K. CHESTERTON
There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any more than in off...
G.K. CHESTERTON
When a man really tells the truth, the first truth he tells is that he himself is a liar.
G.K. CHESTERTON
In all legends men have thought of women as sublime separately but horrible in a herd.
G.K. CHESTERTON
All true friendliness begins with fire and food and drink and the recognition of rain or frost. ...E...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly, wo...
G.K. CHESTERTON
An historic institution, which never went right, is really quite much of a miracle as an institution...
G.K. CHESTERTON
As for the general view that the Church was discredited by the War—they might as well say that the...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The paradise of my fancy is one where pigs have wings
G.K. CHESTERTON
..."vers libre," (free verse) or nine-tenths of it, is not a new metre any more than sleeping in a d...
G.K. CHESTERTON
I do not deny, but strongly affirm, the right of the State to interfere to cure a great evil. I say ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once.
G.K. CHESTERTON
If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
It is quite certain that the skirt means female dignity, not female submission; it can be proved by ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The center of every man's existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accide...
G.K. CHESTERTON
I had tried to be happy by telling myself that man is an animal, like any other which sought its mea...
G.K. CHESTERTON
[Fairy tales] make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run...
G.K. CHESTERTON
That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already, but that God could ha...
G.K. CHESTERTON
If Innocent is happy, it is because he is innocent. If he can defy the conventions, it is just becau...
G.K. CHESTERTON
There is something sinister about putting a leprechaun in a workhouse. The only solid comfort is tha...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Man may behold what ugliness he likes if he is sure that he will not worship it; but there are some ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
If we are calm," replied the policeman, "it is the calm of organized resistance."
"Eh?" said Sy...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Do not be proud of the fact that your grandmother was shocked at something which your are accustomed...
G.K. CHESTERTON
As long as the vision of heaven is always changing, the vision of earth will be exactly the same. No...
G.K. CHESTERTON
I mean that we here are on the wrong side of the tapestry,' answered Father Brown. 'The things that ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.
G.K. CHESTERTON
The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens...
G.K. CHESTERTON
No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for edu...
G.K. CHESTERTON
A man's minor actions and arrangements ought to be free, flexible, creative; the things that should ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
A detective story generally describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. A mode...
G.K. CHESTERTON
These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own.
G.K. CHESTERTON
There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.
G.K. CHESTERTON
Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, b...
G.K. CHESTERTON
There is a limit to human charity," said Lady Outram, trembling all over.

"There is," sai...
G.K. CHESTERTON
He wondered why the pelican was the symbol of charity, except it was that it wanted a good deal of c...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Charity is the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible. Hope is the power of being ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
We do not admire, we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this world for love of the other. But wha...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Dear Sir: Regarding your article 'What's Wrong with the World?' I am. Yours truly,
G.K. CHESTERTON
There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.
G.K. CHESTERTON
We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practica...
G.K. CHESTERTON
He may be mad, but there's method in his madness. There nearly always is method in madness. It's wha...
G.K. CHESTERTON
If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
G.K. CHESTERTON
The first two facts which a healthy boy or girl feels about sex are these: first that it is beautifu...
G.K. CHESTERTON
I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.
G.K. CHESTERTON
My country, right or wrong,” is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperat...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.
G.K. CHESTERTON
Can you not see, […] that fairy tales in their essence are quite solid and straightforward; but th...
G.K. CHESTERTON
the things common to all men are more important than the things peculiar to any men. Ordinary things...
G.K. CHESTERTON