Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina
G. K. Chesterton
227 quotes
“Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1900 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Speaker (15 December 1900)
“When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood Then surely I was born. With monstrous head and sickening cry And ears like errant wings, The devil’s walking parody On all four-footed things.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1900 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Donkey", sts. 1 and 2. The Wild Knight, and Other Poems (1900)
“Fools! For I also had my hour; One far fierce hour and sweet: There was a shout about my ears, And palms before my feet.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1900 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Donkey", st. 4. The Wild Knight, &c. (1900)
“One of the deepest and strangest of all human moods is the mood which will suddenly strike us perhaps in a garden at night, or deep in sloping meadows, the feeling that every flower and leaf has just uttered something stupendously direct and important, and that we have by a prodigy of imbecility not heard or understood it. There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic ignorance.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1903 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Robert Browning (1903)
“Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of 'touching' a man's heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1903 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Twelve Types (1903) Charles II
“The centre of every man's existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1903 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Twelve Types (1903) "Sir Walter Scott
“The simplification of anything is always sensational.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1903 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Varied Types (1903)
“He is only a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of the Conservative.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1903 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Varied Types (1903)
“There is only one thing that it requires real courage to say, and that is a truism.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1904 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: G. F. Watts (1904)
“Earnest Freethinkers need not worry themselves so much about the persecutions of the past. Before the Liberal idea is dead or triumphant we shall see wars and persecutions the like of which the world has never seen.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1905 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In The Daily News (18 February 1905)
“Briefly, you can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1905 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In The Daily News (25 February 1905)
“The Christ-child stood at Mary's knee, His hair was like a crown, And all the flowers looked up at him, And all the stars looked down.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1906 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Christmas Carol, st. 4. The Wild Knight, &c., 2nd ed. (1906)
“There is one creed: 'neath no world-terror's wing Apples forget to grow on apple-trees.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1906 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ecclesiastes, st. 1. The Wild Knight, &c., 2nd ed. (1906)
“I think that if they gave me leave, Within the world to stand, I would be good through all the day I spent in fairyland. They should not hear a word from me, Of selfishness or scorn, If only I could find the door, If only I were born.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1906 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: By the Babe Unborn", sts. 5 and 6. The Wild Knight, &c., 2nd ed. (1906)
“Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1905 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In The Illustrated London News (1905–1907)
“When people impute special vices to the Christian Church, they seem entirely to forget that the world (which is the only other thing there is) has these vices much more. The Church has been cruel; but the world has been much more cruel. The Church has plotted; but the world has plotted much more. The Church has been superstitious; but it has never been so superstitious as the world is when left to itself.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1907 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In The Illustrated London News (14 December 1907)
“The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1907 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Book of Job: An introduction", in Putnam's Monthly (June 1907) p. 356, col. 1
“When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven't got any.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1908 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In The Illustrated London News (7 November 1908)
“Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1909 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In The Illustrated London News (23 October 1909)
“The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1910 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In The Illustrated London News (16 July 1910)
“The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists, as the mother can love the unborn child.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1911 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens (1911) Ch. 2: "Pickwick Papers
“Either criticism is no good at all (a very defensible position) or else criticism means saying about an author the very things that would have made him jump out of his boots.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1911 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens (1911) Ch. 6: "Old Curiosity Shop
“Among the rich you will never find a really generous man even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egotistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1912 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Miscellany of Men (1912)
“I object to a quarrel because it always interrupts an argument.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Magic: A Fantastic Comedy (1913)
“To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Short History of England (1917)
“All government is an ugly necessity.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Short History of England (1917)
“I do not, in my private capacity, believe that a baby gets his best physical food by sucking his thumb; nor that a man gets his best moral food by sucking his soul, and denying its dependence on God or other good things. I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Short History of England (1917), p. 59
“A change of opinions is almost unknown in an elderly military man.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Utopia of Usurers (1917)
“When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In The Illustrated London News (6 April 1918)
“The men that worked for England They have their graves at home; * * * * And they that rule in England In stately conclave met, Alas, alas, for England, They have no graves as yet.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Elegy in a Country Churchyard, as printed in W. Kean Seymour (ed.) A Miscellany of Poetry (1919) p. 26
“A mystic is a man who separates heaven and earth even if he enjoys them both.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: William Blake (1920)
“And I will add this point of merely personal experience of humanity: when men have a real explanation they explain it, eagerly and copiously and in common speech, as Huxley freely gave it when he thought he had it. When they have no explanation to offer, they give short dignified replies, disdainful of the ignorance of the multitude.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Doubts About Darwinism", in The Illustrated London News (17 July 1920)
“It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In The Cleveland Press (1 March 1921)
“There are two ways of dealing with nonsense in this world. One way is to put nonsense in the right place; as when people put nonsense into nursery rhymes. The other is to put nonsense in the wrong place; as when they put it into educational addresses, psychological criticisms, and complaints against nursery rhymes or other normal amusements of mankind.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Child Psychology and Nonsense (15 October 1921)
“I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1922 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In The Illustrated London News (29 April 1922)
Also quoted by: Gautama Buddha (misattributed)
“I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1922 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In The Illustrated London News (3 June 1922)
“Neither reason nor faith will ever die; for men would die if deprived of either. The wildest mystic uses his reason at some stage; if it be only by reasoning against reason. The most incisive sceptic has dogmas of his own; though when he is a very incisive sceptic, he has often forgotten what they are. Faith and reason are in this sense co-eternal; but as the words are popularly used, as loose labels for particular periods, the one is now almost as remote as the other. What was called the Age of Reason has vanished as completely as what are called the Ages of Faith.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1926 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Anti-Religious Thought In The Eighteenth Century; first published in "An Outline of Christianity: The Story of our Civilization", Vol. IV, Christianity and Modern Thought (1926)
“These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1928 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In The Illustrated London News (11 August 1928)
“The full potentialities of human fury cannot be reached until a friend of both parties tactfully intervenes.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Sceptic as a Critic", in The Forum (February 1929)
“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1930 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In The Illustrated London News (19 April 1930)
“It is only great men who take up a great space by not being there.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1930 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lecture at the University of Notre Dame (13 October 1930), as quoted in notes taken by Professor Richard Baker, of the University of Dayton, and published in The Chesterton Review (Winter/Spring 1977)
“A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1930 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview, quoted in The New York Times (21 November 1930)
“There is something to be said for every error; but, whatever may be said for it, the most important thing to be said about it is that it is erroneous.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In The Illustrated London News (25 April 1931)
“The modern world seems to have no notion of preserving different things side by side, of allowing its proper and proportionate place to each, of saving the whole varied heritage of culture. It has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Holding on to Romanticism", in The Illustrated London News (2 May 1931)
“What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but absence of self-criticism.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Bright Old Things — and Other Things", in Sidelights on New London and Newer New York: And Other Essays (1932)
“Plato was right, but not quite right.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Dumb Ox (1934)
“Half the trouble about the modern man is that he is educated to understand foreign languages and misunderstand foreigners.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Autobiography of G. K. Chesterton (1936)
“A stiff apology is a second insult.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Real Dr. Johnson", The Common Man (1950)
“The cause which is blocking all progress today is the subtle scepticism which whispers in a million ears that things are not good enough to be worth improving. If the world is good we are revolutionaries, if the world is evil we must be conservatives. These essays, futile as they are considered as serious literature, are yet ethically sincere, since they seek to remind men that things must be loved first and improved afterwards.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1902 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Defence of a New Edition" — Preface to the second edition (1902)
“In our time the blasphemies are threadbare. Pessimism is now patently, as it always was essentially, more commonplace than piety. Profanity is now more than an affectation — it is a convention. The curse against God is Exercise I in the primer of minor poetry.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source