FastSaying

Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.


Gilbert 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

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
OSCAR WILDE Always forgive your enemies -- nothing annoys them so much.
OSCAR WILDE Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.
OSCAR WILDE Always forgive your enemies--nothing annoys them so much.
OSCAR WILDE Always forgive your enemies--nothing annoys them so much. -Oscar Wilde.
OSCAR WILDE A dead thing goes with the stream, but only a living thing goes against it,” said G. K. Chesterton...
ROD DREHER The gods want you to laugh and above all they want you to laugh at them.
MARTY RUBIN However much you wanted someone to want you, there was nothing you could do to make it happen. Whate...
MANNA FRANCIS It will be very hard to get more money. Members never like paying extra money unless you can show th...
ED CASHMAN You never cash out a 401(k) or IRA to pay off debt, unless it's to avoid a foreclosure or bankru...
DAVE RAMSEY They oftentimes like neglect. You don't want to water them unless they need it.
DON GARLING J. M. Barrie founded a celebrity cricket team with Arthur Conan Doyle, H. G. Wells, Jerome K. Jerome...
JOHN LLOYD If they are gods, why do you lament them? If you lament them, you must no longer regard them as gods...
HERACLITUS Excellence annoys your haters, success infuriates them, and genius kills them.
MATSHONA DHLIWAYO O you much partial gods! Why gave ye men affections, and not power To govern them?
LUDOVICK BARRY O you much partial gods! why gave ye men affections, and not power to govern them?
LUDOVICK BARRY That's what I want to invoke on them. This is bigger than them and it is sport and it's a chain of e...
RICK SAY People don’t pay much attention to anything unless you give them reason to
ERIN MORGENSTERN We just never really were able to do very much with them. It's a simple thing. They're a much better...
BOB KNIGHT Be merry, because it confuses your enemies; happy, because it annoys them; cheerful, because it ange...
MATSHONA DHLIWAYO But strangers and the poor may pluck for themselves the fruit from my tree: that causes less shame. ...
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE The sweat of hard work is not to be displayed. It is much more graceful to appear favored by the god...
MAXINE HONG KINGSTON Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them more.
OSCAR WILDE If you want to punish somebody, never talking to them again is a really good method.
ALEXIS STEWART You want to meet your gods, you filthy cockroaches? Tell the evil sods that Molly Templar says hello...
STEPHEN HUNT You know there are powerful interests here -- we call them K Street lobbyists -- that are very prone...
CHARLES GRASSLEY I want to illustrate children's books and write them. It's very difficult to get into, it's very com...
JANE CHOC it annoys me to see people comfortable when they ought to be uncomfortable; and I insist on making t...
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW Some of them had done things that really, really stun you when you hear about them. Nothing would ev...
MARC ABRAHAMS The best early-stage venture capital investments appear obvious in retrospect; however, very few of ...
DAVID SZE the things common to all men are more important than the things peculiar to any men. Ordinary things...
G.K. CHESTERTON A man reading the Dickens novel wished that it might never end. Men read a Dickens story six times b...
G.K. CHESTERTON Courage is not what people think you have but to appear to them as good as what you really are.
VIKRANT PARSAI Golf courses don't really want us very much. But some of them are so generous for letting us play th...
HANK BONTRAGER Cats are impossible to work with. They're just very difficult because you can't really train...
OSCAR ISAAC Never trust a mirror,' his mother had told him. 'They never tell the truth unless you make them.
ISOBELLE CARMODY Kronos would be 10 times more powerful. His very presence would incinerate you. And once he achieves...
RICK RIORDAN Nobody can turn you into a slave unless you allow them. Nobody can make you afraid of anything, unle...
SUZY KASSEM Nobody can turn you into a slave unless you allow them. Nobody can make you afraid of anything, unle...
SUZY KASSEM When there's a lot of it around, you never want it very much
PEG BRACKEN I started reading G. K. Chesterton's 'The Man Who Was Thursday' on a subway ride, almost...
KATE CHRISTENSEN YOU WILL NEVER KEEP ANYONE IN YOUR LIFE UNLESS YOUR HEART CAN CONTAIN THEM.
JOB LAZARUS OKELLO. YOU WILL NEVER KEEP SOMEONE IN YOUR LIFE UNLESS YOUR HEART CAN CONTAIN THEM.
JOB LAZARUS OKELLO. Self-exploration is very painful, but unless you do that, you will never know who you are and who yo...
IRIS APFEL Our gods are much too busy in our lives for us to ignore them. (Myles)
TAMORA PIERCE You can definitely make them better. A couple of guys have gotten better already. You stay on top of...
JIM LEYLAND I hated to see that because it wasn't us beating them. But you really don't want to put too much emp...
AARON HARRIS If you want to achieve your dreams, you must follow them, and the best way to follow them is not to ...
JACKIE COLLINS Those kids really play our system as well as anybody. By just playing the same way and Gilbert jumpi...
DON HAY But who hath seen the Grocer Treat housemaids to his tea Or crack a bottle of fish sauce Or stand a ...
G. K. CHESTERTON You think it can't get worse than wanting someone and not having them, but it can. You can want some...
MICHELLE HODKIN Pat told me you would never believe it unless you saw it with your own eyes. All of their homes have...
JEANETTE NIKOLAS You can only like someone so much… But never like them as much as you are gonna miss them.
MARK A. COOPER You can have all the plans you want, but unless you test it, you never know.
HARRY CONOVER Another savage trait of our time is the disposition to talk about material substances instead of abo...
G.K. CHESTERTON The problem with being a writer/director: unless you're really disciplined, you start adding pro...
CARY FUKUNAGA Tragic heroes always moan when the gods take an interest in them, but it's the people the gods ignor...
TERRY PRATCHETT Never look down on anybody unless you're helping them up.
JESSE JACKSON Words were useless. At times, they might sound wonderful, but they let you down the moment you reall...
CORNELIA FUNKE You don't want to inhibit cell division. You want to inhibit cell division in the cancer cells, ...
TIM HUNT The biggest lie in the world is that when people tell you that what they really want is for you to t...
CARL WHITE You can never judge your characters. You have to love them, really care about them. You're never jus...
ANNABELLA SCIORRA The best thing to do is just leave them alone. Alligators want to be away from you just as much as y...
JACK HANNAH We hit the ball well, but scattered them around too much. We never could bunch them together enough....
MARISSA CHOVANEC The goal is 15 wins, 200 innings, regardless of when you get them. I don't necessarily want to be an...
BRONSON ARROYO Young people really want you to give them a road map, and they will follow it to a tee. If you tell ...
DANA PERINO When they want you in secret they don’t really want you. They want the adventure. Give them one by...
DONNA LYNN HOPE I want to thank them from the bottom of our hearts. I know it's hard for people to understand the gr...
KRISTEN GRIFFITH The best way to get something good from an artist is to give them a direction and let them go with i...
CHRIS NASR Later, when you're grown up, you realize you never really get to hang out with your family. You pret...
MINDY KALING Gods and wonders always appear, to attend the birth of kings.
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN These juveniles are capable of success like anybody else. If they find something to read that really...
DENNIS COTTRELL Christmas is never over,unless you want it to be... Christmas is a state of mind.
LAUREN MYRACLE you can never love someone as much as you miss them.
JOHN GREEN We invoke the sacrifices of our fallen heroes in the abstract, but we seldom take time to thank them...
RAHM EMANUEL To call them emotional comedies sounds cloying. Like Billy Wilder said, 'You want to make them laugh...
CHARLES SHYER After watching (Gilbert) warm up, I thought they were very nonchalant and really weren't going very ...
MICHELLE ANDERSON They weren't shooting particularly well, we were playing great 'D', however you want to say it, I wa...
STACY BILODEAU Few people are successful unless a lot of other people want them to be.
CHARLES BROWDER Few people are successful unless a lot of other people want them to be.
CHARLES BROWER Few people are successful unless a lot of other people want them to be
CHARLES BROWER Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig.
ROBERT HEINLEIN It's so much fun to play the bad girl. Everybody has that little side of them they never really ...
WILLA HOLLAND The pieces do not fit, as much as you want to jimmy them together.
ALAN KONOP You never know how much you love someone until you have to live without them
EE Maybe I fear things going wrong so much that I pre-empt them by not getting excited about them when ...
JACK DEE Not all angels come from above. Some are beside you or around you even as we speak. Then why can't w...
ADHISH MAZUMDER There's only so much throwing you can do. You don't want to kill them.
DICK WHITTEN I think I became more productive through not having children. I never really had the desire to have ...
DOLLY PARTON Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
TALLULAH BANKHEAD Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN If you really want to get along with somebody, let them be themselves.
WILLIE NELSON They were big-time shots. We couldn't do anything about them. Gilbert came up with some big threes t...
GARY STRONACH Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can never hurt you…unless you believe them. Then...
CHARLES F. GLASSMAN Negative things aren't negative unless you succumb to them.
DENVER HASLAM I didn't want them to be in a Jewish-run modeling agency and appear on Jewish-run television.
APRIL GAEDE They can't hurt you unless you let them.
MARK VICTOR HANSEN They can't hurt you unless you let them.
JENNIFER ANISTON They can't hurt you unless you let them.
JANE FONDA They can't hurt you unless you let them.
ROSANNE CASH

More Gilbert K. Chesterton

Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Coincidences are spiritual puns.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglar...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON A yawn is a silent shout.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally t...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its v...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have wo...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in orde...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON O God of earth and altar, Bow down and hear our cry; Our earthly rulers falter, Our people drift...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON No man knows he is young while he is young.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Truths turn into dogmas the minute they are disputed.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The present condition of fame is merely fashion.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about som...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been a boy.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON "My country, right or wrong," is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except a desperate ca...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writer...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON White... is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, a...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON A radical generally meant a man who thought he could somehow pull up the root without affecting the ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the mi...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON 'My country, right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a de...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rain...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of read...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness double...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gr...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wron...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over... is saying no good son shoul...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The only way to be sure of catching a train is to miss the one before it.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.
GILBERT 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...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON A stiff apology is a second insult... The injured party does not want to be compensated because he h...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON A businessman is the only man who is forever apologizing for his occupation.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educat...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believi...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Being 'contented' ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being conte...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our g...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The worst of work nowadays is what happens to people when they cease to work.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer b...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we per...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we lau...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Let a man walk ten miles steadily on a hot summer's day along a dusty English road, and he will ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON You cannot love a thing without wanting to fight for it.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take...
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 ...
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...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The world will never starve for want of wonders, but for want of wonder.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Courage is almost a contradiction in terms: it means a strong desire to live taking the form of read...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Courage is almost a contradiction in terms: it means a strong desire to live taking the form of re...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Tradition does not mean that the living are dead, but that the dead are living.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a m...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Some men never feel small, but these are the few men who are.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art,...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The mere brute pleasure of reading the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON What affects men sharply about a foreign nation is not so much finding or not finding familiar thing...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one'...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and do...
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...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simp...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be intere...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The word 'good' has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an inj...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbour.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten,...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kid of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruel...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for edu...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The simplification of anything is always sensational.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON And they that rule in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they have no graves ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. B...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON New roads; new ruts.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
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 Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the...
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON It is the test of a good religion whether you can make a joke about it.
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump: you may be freeing him from being a camel.
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON The object of opening the mind as of opening the mouth is to close it again on something solid.
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON It is very good for a man to talk about what he does not understand; as long as he understands that ...
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought.
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON Very few people in the world would care to listen to the real defense of their own characters. The r...
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON "My country, right or wrong," is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperat...
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON Journalism consists largely in saying 'Lord Jones died' to people who never knew Lord Jones was aliv...
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for edu...
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON To be in the weakest camp is to be in the strongest school.
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little boot...
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in or...
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON I realized that ritual will always mean throwing away something; Destroying our corn or wine upon t...
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in fairy books, charm...
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was bl...
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON 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