The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled...
G. K. CHESTERTON You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best write...
G K CHESTERTON Virtue is not the absense of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separa...
G. K. CHESTERTON Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the ...
G. K. CHESTERTON Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.
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 honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.
G. K. CHESTERTON Half a truth is better than no politics.
G. K. CHESTERTON A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.
G. K. CHESTERTON The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglar...
G. K. CHESTERTON We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified ...
G. K. CHESTERTON Man knows that there are in the soul tints more bewildering, more numberless, and more nameless that...
G. K. CHESTERTON All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.
G. K. CHESTERTON There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it i...
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 Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalized.
G. K. CHESTERTON One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.
G. K. CHESTERTON Do not free the camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.
G. 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...
G. K. CHESTERTON Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
G. K. CHESTERTON People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.
G. K. CHESTERTON Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a re...
G. K. CHESTERTON Courage is getting away from death by continually coming within an inch of it.
G. K. CHESTERTON Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the mi...
G. K. CHESTERTON In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a p...
G. K. CHESTERTON The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untr...
G. K. CHESTERTON Boyhood is a most complex and incomprehensible thing. Even when one has been through it, one does no...
G. K. CHESTERTON If the barricades went up in our streets and the poor became masters, I think the priests would esca...
G. K. CHESTERTON Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world...
G. K. CHESTERTON The artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs. Artists of a large and wholesome vitali...
G. K. CHESTERTON Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.
G. K. CHESTERTON Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.
G. K. CHESTERTON The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In thi...
G. K. CHESTERTON Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about som...
G. K. CHESTERTON Dogma is actually the only thing that cannot be separated from education. It IS education. A teacher...
G. K. CHESTERTON The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for ...
G. K. CHESTERTON The present condition of fame is merely fashion.
G. K. CHESTERTON When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it. The two things that n...
G. K. CHESTERTON Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young.
G. K. CHESTERTON There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes eve...
G. K. CHESTERTON The old idea that the joke was not good enough for the company has been superseded by the new aristo...
G. 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...
G. K. CHESTERTON To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believi...
G. K. CHESTERTON Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a m...
G. K. CHESTERTON Evil comes at leisure like the disease. Good comes in a hurry like the doctor.
G. K. CHESTERTON Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
G. K. CHESTERTON The timidity of the child or the savage is entirely reasonable; they are alarmed at this world, beca...
G. K. CHESTERTON One may understand the Cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.
G. K. CHESTERTON The world will never starve for want of wonders, but for want of wonder.
G. K. CHESTERTON Our civilization has decided that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important...
G. K. CHESTERTON What we call personality (...) has become the most impersonal thing in the world. Its pale and featu...
G. K. CHESTERTON The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense...
G. K. CHESTERTON Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our g...
G. K. CHESTERTON The worst of work nowadays is what happens to people when they cease to work.
G. K. CHESTERTON A stiff apology is a second insult. The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has...
G. K. CHESTERTON Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit.
G. K. CHESTERTON Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more ...
G. K. CHESTERTON The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.
G. K. CHESTERTON It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.
G. K. CHESTERTON If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.
G. K. CHESTERTON O God of earth and altar,
Bow down and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our peop...
G. K. CHESTERTON We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to ...
G. K. CHESTERTON The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.
G. K. CHESTERTON The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered is to miss the train before.
G. K. CHESTERTON Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes -- our ancestors. It is the democrac...
G. K. CHESTERTON Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would...
G. K. CHESTERTON The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything.
G. K. CHESTERTON Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.
G. K. CHESTERTON Psychoanalysis is confession without absolution.
G. K. CHESTERTON The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be intere...
G. K. CHESTERTON But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet. Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do n...
G. K. CHESTERTON My country wrong or right, is like saying my mother, drunk or sober.
G. K. CHESTERTON My country, right or wrong is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate ca...
G. K. CHESTERTON Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal ...
G. K. CHESTERTON The average man votes below himself; he votes with half a mind or a hundredth part of one. A man oug...
G. K. CHESTERTON The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.
G. K. CHESTERTON If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you...
G. K. CHESTERTON People in high life are hardened to the wants and distresses of mankind as surgeons are to their bod...
G. K. CHESTERTON Soldiers have many faults, but they have one redeeming merit; they are never worshippers of force. S...
G. K. CHESTERTON Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we per...
G. K. CHESTERTON It is as healthy to enjoy sentiment as to enjoy jam.
G. K. CHESTERTON Merely having an open mind is nothing; the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is t...
G. K. CHESTERTON A large section of the intelligentsia seems wholly devoid of intelligence.
G. K. CHESTERTON The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found...
G. K. CHESTERTON The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life.
G. K. CHESTERTON There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats Grape Nuts o...
G. K. CHESTERTON To be clever enough to get all the money, one must be stupid enough to want it.
G. K. CHESTERTON We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity.
G. K. CHESTERTON Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a...
G. K. CHESTERTON They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords. Lords without anger and honor, who dare not c...
G. K. CHESTERTON What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simp...
G. K. CHESTERTON We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbor.
G. K. CHESTERTON Your next-door neighbor is not a man; he is an environment. He is the barking of a dog; he is the no...
G. K. CHESTERTON The Museum is not meant either for the wanderer to see by accident or for the pilgrim to see with aw...
G. K. CHESTERTON A new morality has burst upon us with some violence in connection with the problem of strong drink; ...
G. K. CHESTERTON Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educat...
G. K. CHESTERTON The golden age only comes to men when they have forgotten gold.
G. K. CHESTERTON The home is not the one tame place in the world of adventure. It is the one wild place in the world ...
G. K. CHESTERTON Their is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.
G. K. CHESTERTON With any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain healthy humiliation.
G. K. CHESTERTON One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time.
G. K. CHESTERTON The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real ...
G. K. CHESTERTON An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wron...
G. K. CHESTERTON Journalism consists largely in saying Lord James is dead to people who never knew Lord James was ali...
G. K. CHESTERTON People accuse journalism of being too personal; but to me it has always seemed far too impersonal. I...
G. K. CHESTERTON A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.
G. K. CHESTERTON The full value of this life can only be got by fighting; the violent take it by storm. And if we hav...
G. K. CHESTERTON You cannot love a thing without wanting to fight for it.
G. K. CHESTERTON Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy ...
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 Some men never feel small, but these are the few men who are.
G. K. CHESTERTON Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.
G. K. CHESTERTON There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uni...
G. K. CHESTERTON A yawn is a silent shout.
G. K. CHESTERTON A turkey is more occult and awful than all the angels and archangels. In so far as God has partly re...
G. K. CHESTERTON Those thinkers who cannot believe in any gods often assert that the love of humanity would be in its...
G. K. CHESTERTON All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art,...
G. K. CHESTERTON A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims pe...
G. K. CHESTERTON Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.
G. K. CHESTERTON Most Americans are born drunk, and really require a little wine or beer to sober them. They have a s...
G. K. CHESTERTON It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we lau...
G. K. CHESTERTON Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover...
G. K. CHESTERTON The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential s...
G. K. CHESTERTON You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in orde...
G. K. CHESTERTON There are no uninteresting things, there are only uninterested people.
G. K. CHESTERTON True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situatio...
G. K. CHESTERTON Being contented ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being content with an...
G. K. CHESTERTON The mere brute pleasure of reading --the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.
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 New roads; new ruts.
G. K. CHESTERTON I believe in getting into hot water. I think it keeps you clean.
G. K. CHESTERTON Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really ...
G. K. CHESTERTON I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.
G. K. CHESTERTON If you want the last word, apologize
G. K. CHESTERTON Children are innocent and love justice, while most adults are wicked and prefer mercy.
G. K. CHESTERTON People in general are cruel to one another. The only way to have fun to them is to make fun of someo...
G. K. CHESTERTON Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kid of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruel...
G. K. CHESTERTON All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. B...
G. K. CHESTERTON Compromise is never anything but an ignoble truce between the duty of a man and the terror of a cowa...
G. K. CHESTERTON A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.
G. K. CHESTERTON A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cos...
G. K. CHESTERTON Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt.
G. K. CHESTERTON When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its v...
G. K. CHESTERTON The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. He is the man who has lost everything except his ...
G. K. CHESTERTON Silence is the unbearable repartee.
G. K. CHESTERTON Bigotry may be roughly defined as the anger of men who have no opinions.
G. K. CHESTERTON When Michelangelo finished the painting of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling, he spent the rest of his li...
G. K. CHESTERTON The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally t...
G. K. CHESTERTON Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the ...
G. K. CHESTERTON 'My country, right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate ...
G. K. CHESTERTON People generally quarrel because they can't argue.
G. K. CHESTERTON There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.
G. K. CHESTERTON If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry.
G. K. CHESTERTON Journalism largely consists of saying "Lord Jones is Dead" to people who never knew that Lord Jones ...
G. K. CHESTERTON Women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes.
G. K. CHESTERTON A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.
G. K. CHESTERTON The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life in order to keep it.
G. K. CHESTERTON I do not believe in a fate that falls on all men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that f...
G. K. CHESTERTON The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.
G. K. CHESTERTON Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really ...
G. K. CHESTERTON There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man ...
G. K. CHESTERTON The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.
G. K. CHESTERTON But a somewhat more liberal and sympathetic examination of mankind will convince us that the cross i...
G. K. CHESTERTON Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
G. K. CHESTERTON All slang is a metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.
G. K. CHESTERTON I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.
G. K. CHESTERTON Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can...
G. K CHESTERTON Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.
G K CHESTERTON We are all in the same boat in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.
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 A stiff apology is a second insult... The injured party does not want to be compensated because he h...
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 The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.
G. K. CHESTERTON You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.
G. K. CHESTERTON Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and t...
G. K. CHESTERTON The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist see what he has come to see.
G. K. CHESTERTON The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's ow...
G. K. CHESTERTON How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.
G. K. CHESTERTON Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.
G. K. CHESTERTON Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer b...
G. K. CHESTERTON Journalism largely consists of saying 'Lord Jones is Dead' to people who never knew that Lord Jones ...
G. K. CHESTERTON It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might...
G. K. CHESTERTON If there were no God, there would be no Atheists.
G. K. CHESTERTON I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it.
G. K. CHESTERTON I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
G. K. CHESTERTON Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.
G. K. CHESTERTON Every man is important is he loses his life; and every man is funny if he loses his hat and has to r...
G. K. CHESTERTON Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.
G. K. CHESTERTON By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may ...
G. K. CHESTERTON Beware of no man more than yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.
G. K. CHESTERTON Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.
G. K. CHESTERTON An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly c...
G. K. CHESTERTON "My country, right or wrong," is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate...
G. K. CHESTERTON Virtue is not the absense of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate...
G. K. CHESTERTON Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.
G. K. CHESTERTON Happiness is a mystery like religion, and should never be rationalized.
G. K. CHESTERTON Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy ...
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 There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uni...
G. K. CHESTERTON There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points,...
G. K. CHESTERTON