G.K. Chesterton > Quotes

“Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Just going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in your garage makes you a car.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Alarms And Discursions

“Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“I am not absentminded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“If there were no God, there would be no atheists.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“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.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“It [feminism] is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Dear Sir: Regarding your article 'What's Wrong with the World?' I am. Yours truly,”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Heretics: The Annotated

“It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“It is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“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.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“The world will never starve for want of wonders, but for want of wonder.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“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.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference which is an elegant name for ignorance.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“One sees great things from the valley, only small things from the peak.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“A dead thing goes with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“We fear men so much, because we fear God so little. One fear cures another. When man's terror scares you, turn your thoughts to the wrath of God.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

“Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.”
― G.K. Chesterton