Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes
A Catholic is a person who has plucked up courage to face the incredible and inconceivable idea that something else may be wiser than he is.
Boyhood is a most complex and incomprehensible thing. Even when one has been through it, one does not understand what it was. A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been the boy.
Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.
The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.
The difficulty of explaining ‘why I am a Catholic’ is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
Think of all those ages through which men have had the courage to die, and then remember that we have actually fallen to talking about having the courage to live.
The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of something he cannot understand.
In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it.
The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind.
A child's instinct is almost perfect in the matter of fighting. The child's hero is always the man or boy who defends himself suddenly and splendidly against aggression.
Any one thinking of the Holy Child as born in December would mean by it exactly what we mean by it; that Christ is not merely a summer sun of the prosperous but a winter fire for the unfortunate.
The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.
There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.
The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.
The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything.
Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.
Journalism largely consists of saying 'Lord Jones is Dead' to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.
The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life.
When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.
At the back of our brains is a blaze of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life is to dig for this sunrise of wonder.
Dipsomaniac and the abstainer are not only both mistaken, but they both make the same mistake. They both regard wine as a drug and not as a drink.
Those who leave the tradition of truth do not escape into something which we call Freedom. They only escape into something else, which we call Fashion.
One must somehow find a way of loving the world without trusting it; somehow one must love the world without being worldly.
The people has no definite disbelief in the temples of theology. The people has a very fiery and practical disbelief in the temples of physical science.
I will go forth as a real outlaw," he said, "and as men do robbery on the highway I will do right on the highway; and it will be counted a wilder crime.
It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never gotten tired of making them
Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.
All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.
Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.
Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf; is better than a whole loaf.
