Jhaniel > Jhaniel's 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.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“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

“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, Heretics

“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, Orthodoxy

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

“I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Fairy tales make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water. a”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

“Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front--”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

“Fairy tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

“There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

“For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Journalism largely consists in saying "Lord Jones is dead" to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“The things we see every day are the things we never see at all.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Lying in bed would be an altogether supreme experience if one only had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
― Oscar Wilde

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories