G.K. Chesterton Quotes
There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.
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.
If a rhinoceros were to enter this restaurant now, there is no denying he would have great power here. But I should be the first to rise and assure him that he had no authority whatever.
Idolatry is when you worship what you should use, and use what you should worship.
"Are you a devil?" "I am a man," answered Father Brown gravely; "and therefore have all devils in my heart."
'My country, right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'
The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.
Classic literature is still something that hangs in the air like a song.
Odd, isn't it, that a thief and a vagabond should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and frivolous, and without fruit for God or man?
Where does a wise man kick a pebble? On the beach. Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest.
In a world flagrant with the failures of civilization, what is there particularly immortal about our own?
When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.
The modern world is a crowd of very rapid racing cars all brought to a standstill and stuck in a block of traffic.
The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
I believe in preaching to the converted; for I have generally found that the converted do not understand their own religion.
Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit.
Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground.
And they that rule in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they have no graves as yet.
Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.
Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.
A madman is not someone who has lost his reason but someone who has lost everything but his reason
A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon.
It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense.
humor can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle
Pride juggles with her toppling towers, They strike the sun and cease, But the firm feet of humility They grip the ground like trees.
In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was logic.
I never could see anything wrong in sensationalism; and I am sure our society is suffering more from secrecy than from flamboyant revelations.
Here ends another day, during which I have had eyes, ears, hands and the great world around me. Tomorrow begins another day. Why am I allowed two?
Only friendliness produces friendship. And we must look far deeper into the soul of man for the thing that produces friendliness.
There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.
The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.
What affects men sharply about a foreign nation is not so much finding or not finding familiar things; it is rather not finding them in the familiar place.
And it did for one wild moment cross my mind that, perhaps, those might not be the very best judges of the relation of religion to happiness who, by their own account, had neither one nor the other.
The greatest political storm flutters only a fringe of humanity. But an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children literally alter the destiny of nations.
You have not wasted your time; you have helped to save the world. We are not buffoons, but very desperate men at war with a vast conspiracy.
Mr. McCabe thinks that I am not serious but only funny, because Mr. McCabe thinks that funny is the opposite of serious. Funny is the opposite of not funny and nothing else.
True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare.
There are two kinds of charlatan: the man who is called a charlatan, and the man who really is one. The first is the quack who cures you; the second is the highly qualified person who doesn't.
A small artist is content with art; a great artist is content with nothing except everything.
The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.
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.
