G.K. Chesterton Quotes

Democracy means government by the uneducated while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

True contentment is the power of getting of any situation all that there is in it.

Forgiving means to pardon the unpardonable faith means believing the unbelievable and hoping means to hope when things are hopeless.

It matters very little whether a man is discontented in the name of pessimism or progress if his discontent does in fact paralyse his power of appreciating what he has got.

True contentment... is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare.

We make our friends we make our enemies but God makes our next-door neighbour.

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act but I do believe in a fate that falls on men unless they act.

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.

Happiness is a mystery like religion and it should never be rationalized.

The true object of all human life is play.

Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time he is not two men but one and he has saved not only his soul but his life.

The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.

Forgiving means to pardon the unpardonable Faith means believing the unbelievable And hoping means to hope when things are hopeless.

A tragedy means always a man's struggle with that which is stronger than man.

A great city is the place to escape the true drama of provincial life and find solace in fantasy.

To be clever enough to get all that money one must be stupid enough to want it.

Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.

Is dishwater dull? Naturalists with microscopes have told me that it teems with quiet fun.

Large organization is loose organization. Nay it would be almost as true to say that organization is always disorganization.

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump you may be freeing him from being a camel.

The mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet's but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatic's.

It isn't that they can't see the solution it's that they can't see the problem.

New roads new ruts.

Psychoanalysis is confession without absolution.

Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.

Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality because reality is a spirit.

When people cease to believe in God they don't believe in nothing they believe in anything.

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors and also to love our enemies probably because they are generally the same people.

One may understand the cosmos but never the ego the self is more distant than any star.

I am not absent-minded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.

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.

One sees great things from the valley only small things from the peak.

A man must love a thing very much if he not only practises it without any hope of fame and money but even practises it without any hope of doing it well.

After one of the lectures in Philadelphia, a woman asked Chesterton what made women talk so much, to which he replied, briefly, 'God, Madam'.