Quotes By Gilbert K. Chesterton

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.

The simplification of anything is always sensational.

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

Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.

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.

Half a truth is better than no politics.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kid of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty.

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.

Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbour.

To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.

And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.

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.

Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.

The whole order of things is as outrageous as any miracle which could presume to violate it.

The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

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.

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.

A stiff apology is a second insult... The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.

The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.

If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.

Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalised.

The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life.

Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young.

The present condition of fame is merely fashion.