Quotes By Gilbert K. Chesterton
Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered is to miss the train before.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Being "contented" ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and resigned to living in it; it ought to mean appreciating all there is in such a position.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
White... is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black... God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.
Gilbert K. Chesterton