FastSaying

When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood Then surely I was born. With monstrous head and sickening cry And ears like errant wings, The devil's walking parody On all four-footed things.


Gilbert Keith Chesterton

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More Gilbert Keith 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 The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.
GILBERT KEITH 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 Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.
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 The narcissist, cut off from her spirituality, is one who spends unquantifiable energy supporting an...
KEITH AARON GILBERT 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 Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we p...
GK 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