G.K. Chesterton Quotes

The more truly we can see life as a fairytale, the more clearly the tale resolves itself into war with the dragon who is wasting fairyland.

The best kind of giving is thanksgiving.

We should thank God for beer and burgundy by not drinking too much of them.

The word good has many meanings.

Materialists and madmen never have doubts.

For religion all men are equal, as all pennies are equal, because the only value of any of them is that they bear the image of the king.

Those thinkers who cannot believe in any gods often assert that the love of humanity would be in itself sufficient for them; and so, perhaps, it would, if they had it.

It is assumed that the skeptic has no bias; whereas he has a very obvious bias in favour of skepticism.

A modern man may disapprove of some of his sweeping reforms, and approve others; but finds it difficult not to admire even where he does not approve.

The real pleasure-seeking is the combination of luxury and austerity in such a way that the luxury can really be felt.

[Fairy tales] make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.

A man cannot be wise enough to be a great artist without being wise enough to wish to be a philosopher.

I agree with the realistic Irishman who said he preferred to prophesy after the event.

Women are the only realists; their whole object in life is to pit their realism against the extravagant, excessive, and occasionally drunken idealism of men.

When you with velvets mantled o'er, Defy December's tempests frore, Oh! spare one garment from your store, To clothe the poor at Christmas.

Truths turn into dogmas the minute they are disputed.

Dear Sir: Regarding your article 'What's Wrong with the World?' I am. Yours truly.

Democracy is like blowing your nose. You may not do it well, but it's something you ought to do yourself.

All that we call spirit and art and ecstacy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forgot.

Feminists are those who cannot stand female characteristics.

There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob.

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.

It is the beginning of all true criticism of our time to realize that it has really nothing to say, at the very moment when it has invented so tremendous a trumpet for saying it.

The primary paradox of Christianity is that the ordinary condition of man is not his sane or sensible condition; that the normal itself is an abnormality.

The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them.

I may not practice what I preach but God forbid I should preach what I practice

If it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly. (on not perfectionism to put things off) .

It is better to speak wisdom foolishly like the saints than to speak folly wisely like the deans.

There should be a burnished tablet let into the ground on the spot where some courageous man first ate Stilton cheese, and survived.

Men in England are ruled, at this minute by the clock, by brutes who refuse them bread, by liars who refuse them news, and by fools who cannot govern, and therefore wish to enslave.

Art is born when the temporary touches the eternal.

No sceptical philosopher can ask any questions that may not equally be asked by a tired child on a hot afternoon.

Marxism: The theory that all the important things in history are rooted in an economic motive, that history is a science, a science of the search for food.

For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.

A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality.

It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money as to see the rich asking for more money. And advertisement is the rich asking for more money.

Life is indeed terribly complicated—to a man who has lost his principles.

Acceptance is the truest kinship with humanity.

Romance is the deepest thing in life. It is deeper than reality.

The Mass is very long and tiresome unless one loves God.

It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things forbidden.

Puritanism was an honourable mood; it was a noble fad. In other words, it was a highly creditable mistake.

Teach to the young, men's enduring truths, and let the learned amuse themselves with their passing errors.

The long words are not the hard words, it is the short words that are hard. There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the word "damn" than in the word "degeneration."

Let us not decide what is good, but let it be considered good not to decide it.

My brain and this world don't fit each other; and there's an end of it.

'As you have made your bed, so you must lie on it'; which again is simply a lie. If I have made my bed uncomfortable, please God I will make it again.

This is the age in which thin and theoretic minorities can cover and conquer unconscious and untheoretic majorities.

In all legends men have thought of women as sublime separately but horrible in a herd.

The secularists have not wrecked divine things; but the secularists have wrecked secular things, if that is any comfort to them. The Titans did not scale heaven; but they laid waste the world.