G.K. Chesterton Quotes
I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
The family is the test of freedom because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
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.
The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden heaven is a playground.
Brave men are all vertebrates they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.
There is only one thing which is generally safe from plagiarism -- self-denial.
I strongly object to wrong arguments on the right side. I think I object to them more than to the wrong arguments on the wrong side.
There is such a thing as a small and cramped eternity. You may see it in many modern religions
We men and women are all in the same boat, upon a stormy sea. We owe to each other a terrible and tragic loyalty.
Love is not blind that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound and the more it is bound the less it is blind.
There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast, ' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.
A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.
...the fundamental things in a man are not the things he explains, but rather the things he forgets to explain.
The joke is generally in the oddest way the truth and yet not the fact.
The place that the shepherds found was not an academy or an abstract republic, it was not a place of myths allegorised or dissected or explained or explained away. It was a place of dreams come true.
Unhappy! of course you'll be unhappy. Who the devil are you that you shouldn't be unhappy, like the mother that bore you?
There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less
The man who kills a man kills a man.The man who kills himself kills all men.As far as he is concerned, he wipes out the world.
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
The difference between the poet and the mathematician is that the poet tries to get his head into the heavens while the mathematician tries to get the heavens into his head.
..."vers libre, " (free verse) or nine-tenths of it, is not a new metre any more than sleeping in a ditch is a new school of architecture.
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.
Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.
There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and a tired man who wants a book to read.
There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book, and a tired man who wants a book to read.
There are books showing men how to succeed in everything they are written by men who cannot even succeed in writing books.
This man's spiritual power has been precisely this, that he has distinguished between custom and creed. He has broken the conventions, but he has kept the commandments.
The issue is now quite clear. It is between light and darkness and every one must choose his side.
The men who made the joke saw something deep which they could not express except by something silly and emphatic.
it will be generally found that the popular joke is not true to the letter, but is true to the spirit. The joke is generally in the oddest way the truth and yet not the fact.
Whatever we may think of the merits of torturing children for pleasure, and no doubt there is much to be said on both sides, I am sure we all agree that it should be done with sterilized instruments.
It is one thing to believe in witches, and quite another to believe in witch-smellers.
What again could this astonishing thing be like which people were so anxious to contradict, that in doing so they did not mind contradicting themselves?
Has it never struck you that a man who does next to nothing but hears men's real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil?
The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul.
We may fight for the cause of international peace because we are very fond of fighting.
And pray where in earth or heaven are there prudent marriages? Might as well talk about prudent suicides.
Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.
The objection to fairy stories is that they tell children there are dragons, but children have always known there are dragons. Fairy stories tell children that dragons can be killed.
The moderns say we must not punish heretics. My only doubt is whether we have the right to punish anybody else.
Strike a glass and it will not endure an instant. Simply do not strike it and it will endure a thousand years.
But of all the instances of error arising from this physical fancy, the worst is that we have before us: the habit of exhaustively describing a social sickness, and then propounding a social drug.