Dive into the profound wisdom and timeless insights of one of the most influential writers of the 20th century with a collection of Quotes By G.K. Chesterton. Known for his wit, intellect, and keen observations on life, Chesterton's words continue to resonate with readers across generations, offering both solace and inspiration in an ever-changing world. From profound reflections on faith and philosophy to whimsical musings on the human condition, Chesterton's quotes encapsulate the breadth and depth of the human experience.
Quotes By G. K. Chesterton (2024)
Explore the profound insights and timeless wisdom of G.K. Chesterton with this curated collection of unique quotes that offer glimpses into the depths of the human experience.
"The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people."
"The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him."
"Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."
"The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul."
"I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean."
"The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense."
"Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly."
"There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds."
"Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere."
"The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered is to miss the train before."
"The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up."
"A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author."
"A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it."
"All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive."
"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried."
"Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another."
"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about."
"We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbor."
"Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously."
"The word 'good' has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man."
"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
"Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable."
"Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese."
"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions."
"The word 'sin' is derived from the Indo-European root 'es-,' meaning 'to be.' When I discovered this etymology, I concluded that it was no mere chance that the most important category of sin is 'to be.'"
"I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder."
"It's not that we don't have enough scoundrels to curse; it's that we don't have enough good men to curse them."
"Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all."
"The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason."
"The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man."
"We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish."
"Men are men before they are lawyers or physicians or manufacturers; and if you make them capable and sensible men, they will make themselves capable and sensible lawyers and physicians."
"The modern city is ugly not because it is a city but because it is not enough of a city, because it is a jungle, because it is confused and anarchic, and surging with selfish and materialistic energies."
"If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God."
"A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying."
"It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down."
"Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity."
"It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it."
"It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong."
"The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see."
"The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost."
"Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried."
"There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less."
"The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice."
"The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone."
"If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."
"It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light."
"To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless."
"The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land."
"To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it."
"The world will never starve for want of wonders, but only for want of wonder."
"It is not only possible to say a great deal in praise of play; it is really possible to say the highest things in praise of it."
"The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all."
"The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world."
"It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged."
"The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them."
"The things we see every day are the things we never see at all."
"The whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a perpetual crisis."
"Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable."
"Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity."
"The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost."
"Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere."
"The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid."
"The point of an adventure is not to know what the outcome will be."
"The past is not what it was; nor is the future what it used to be."
"We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press."
"Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial."
"The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children."
"It is always the secure who are humble."
"Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere."
"Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed."
"Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die."
"A yawn is a silent shout."
"The only right way of telling a story is to begin at the beginning--at the beginning of the world."
"The man who is really in earnest must set the course of the ship himself, and if the ship goes down, he can blame only himself."
"There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect."
"Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle."
"The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground."
"The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind."
"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected."
"Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly."
"The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see."
"The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits."
"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead."
"The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild."
"The only way to be sure of catching a train is to miss the one before it."
"There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions."
"The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese."
"There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable."
"When it comes to life, the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude."
"Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out."
"A good man's work is effected by doing what he does, not by thinking about what he will do."
"There are two ways to get enough: One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less."
"We are all in the same boat, in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty."
"The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums."
"You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution."
"When people begin to ignore human dignity, it will not be long before they begin to ignore human rights."
"A true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him."
"Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men."
"We are all in the same boat, in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty."
In a world inundated with fleeting trends and ephemeral philosophies, the enduring wisdom found within Quotes By G.K. Chesterton serves as a beacon of timeless truth and insight. Chesterton's words, like beacons of light in the darkness, illuminate the path of understanding and offer solace to weary souls seeking meaning in a complex world. As we conclude this journey through Chesterton's quotes, let us carry with us the profound lessons and thought-provoking reflections that have enriched our minds and nourished our spirits.
