G.K. Chesterton Quotes

The obvious effect of frivolous divorce will be frivolous marriage. If people can be separated for no reason they will feel it all the easier to be united for no reason.

I do not feel any contempt for an atheist, who is often a man limited and constrained by his own logic to a very sad simplification.

Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense, every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else.

There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats Grape-Nuts on principle.

I still think sincere pessimism the unpardonable sin.

A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true.

Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate.

Silence is the unbearable repartee.

If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.

Atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas . . . for it is the assertion of a universal negative.

In Catholicism, the pint, the pipe and the Cross can all fit together.

One elephant having a trunk was odd; but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot.

Forms of expression always appear turgid to those who do not share the emotions they represent.

The simplification of anything is always sensational.

Big Business and State Socialism are very much alike, especially Big Business.

The scientific facts, which were supposed to contradict the faith in the nineteenth century, are nearly all of them regarded as unscientific fictions in the twentieth century.

Employers will give time to eat, time to sleep; they are in terror of a time to think.

The triangle of truisms, of father, mother and child, cannot be destroyed; it can only destroy those civilizations which disregard it.

The woman does not work because the man tells her to work and she obeys. On the contrary, the woman works because she has told the man to work and he hasn’t obeyed.

Wit is a sword; it is meant to make people feel the point as well as see it.

One of the chief uses of religion is that it makes us remember our coming from darkness, the simple fact that we are created.

Psychoanalysis is a science conducted by lunatics for lunatics. They are generally concerned with proving that people are irresponsible; and they certainly succeed in proving that some people are

Business, especially big business, is now organized like an army. It is, as some would say, a sort of mild militarism without bloodshed; as I say, a militarism without the military virtues.

We lose our bearings entirely by speaking of the 'lower classes' when we mean humanity minus ourselves.

The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.

Human anger is a higher thing than what is called divine discontent. For you must be angry with something; but you can be discontented with everything.

All things are from God; and above all, reason and imagination and the great gifts of the mind. They are good in themselves; and we must not altogether forget their origin even in their perversion.

There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.

The past is not what it was.

You don't want to be so open minded that your brains fall out!

You can't have the family farm without the family.

We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.

Whatever else we may say of our own age, for good or evil, nobody is likely to call it an Age of Reason.

A sober man may become a drunkard through being a coward. A brave man may become a coward through being a drunkard.

All true friendliness begins with fire and food and drink and the recognition of rain or frost.

What a glorious garden of wonders the lights of Broadway would be to anyone lucky enough to be unable to read.

The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs. It is a disease which arises from men no having sufficient power of expression to utter and get rid of the element of art in their being.

If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?

Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves.

Powerful men who have powerful passions use much of their strength in forging chains for themselves.

The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.

...It's natural to believe in the supernatural. It never feels natural to accept only natural things.

But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet. Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.

People in high life are hardened to the wants and distresses of mankind as surgeons are to their bodily pains.

Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich.

The only defensible war is a war of defense.

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

The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

I represent the jolly mass of mankind. I am the happy and reckless Christian.

He may be mad, but there's method in his madness. There nearly always is method in madness. It's what drives men mad, being methodical.