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G. K. Chesterton

227 quotes

“I must frankly say that Bernard Shaw always seems to me to use the word God not only without any idea of what it means, but without one moment's thought about what it could possibly mean. He said to some atheist, "Never believe in a God that you cannot improve on." The atheist (being a sound theologian) naturally replied that one should not believe in a God whom one could improve on; as that would show that he was not God.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For there are two types of great humorist: those who love to see a man absurd and those who hate to see him absurd. Of the first kind are Rabelais and Dickens; of the second kind are Swift and Bernard Shaw.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Shyness is always the sign of a divided soul; a man is shy because he somehow thinks his position at once despicable and important. If he were without humility he would not care; and if he were without pride he would not care.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have passed the age of the demagogue, the man who has little to say and says it loud. We have come to the age of the mystagogue or don, the man who has nothing to say, but says it softly and impressively in an indistinct whisper.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For my friend said that he opened his intellect as the sun opens the fans of a palm tree, opening for opening's sake, opening infinitely for ever. But I said that I opened my intellect as I opened my mouth, in order to shut it again on something solid. I was doing it at the moment. And as I truly pointed out, it would look uncommonly silly if I went on opening my mouth infinitely, for ever and ever.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[A]rt is limitation. [...] The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I swear to you, then," said MacIan, after a pause. "I swear to you that nothing shall come between us. I swear to you that nothing shall be in my heart or in my head till our swords clash together. I swear it by the God you have denied, by the Blessed Lady you have blasphemed; I swear it by the seven swords in her heart. I swear it by the Holy Island where my fathers are, by the honour of my mother, by the secret of my people, and by the chalice of the Blood of God." The atheist drew up his head. "And I," he said, "give my word.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But whenever one meets modern thinkers (as one often does) progressing toward a madhouse, one always finds, on inquiry, that they have just had a splendid escape from another madhouse. Thus, hundreds of people become Socialists, not because they have tried Socialism and found it nice, but because they have tried Individualism and found it particularly nasty.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas ... for it is the assertion of a universal negative”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As for science and religion, the known and admitted facts are few and plain enough. All that the parsons say is unproved. All that the doctors say is disproved. That's the only difference between science and religion there's ever been, or will be.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The academic mind reflects infinity, and is full of light by the simple process of being shallow and standing still.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Marriage is a duel to the death, which no man of honour should decline.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a quaint comment on the notion that the English are practical and the French merely visionary, that we were rebels in arts while they were rebels in arms.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The mind moves by instincts, associations and premonitions and not by fixed dates or completed processes. Action and reaction will occur simultaneously: or the cause actually be found after the effect. Errors will be resisted before they have been properly promulgated: notions will be first defined long after they are dead.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A man making the confession of any creed worth ten minutes' intelligent talk, is always a man who gains something and gives up something. So long as he does both he can create: for he is making an outline and a shape.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The central idea of poetry is the idea of guessing right, like a child.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He did not know the way things were going: he was too Victorian to understand the Victorian epoch. He did not know enough ignorant people to have heard the news.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is largely because the free-thinkers, as a school, have hardly made up their minds whether they want to be more optimist or more pessimist than Christianity that their small but sincere movement has failed.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He was, if ever there was one, an inspired poet. I do not think it the highest sort of poet. And you never discover who is an inspired poet until the inspiration goes.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no great harm in the theorist who makes up a new theory to fit a new event. But the theorist who starts with a false theory and then sees everything as making it come true is the most dangerous enemy of human reason.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But since he stood for England And knew what England means, Unless you give him bacon You mustn’t give him beans.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the city set upon slime and loam, They cry in their Parliament, "Who goes home?" And there comes no answer in arch or dome, For none in the city of graves goes home. Yet these shall perish and understand, For God has pity on this great land.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Men that are men again: Who goes home? Tocsin and trumpeter! Who goes home? For there's blood on the grass and blood on the foam, And blood on the body, when Man comes home. And a voice valedictory: Who is for victory? Who is for liberty? Who goes home?”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode, The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage, Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen, Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am not fighting a hopeless fight. People who have fought in real fights don't, as a rule.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our chiefs said 'Done,' and I did not deem it; Our seers said 'Peace,' and it was not peace; Earth will grow worse till men redeem it, And wars more evil, ere all wars cease.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) first seen 1910 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Song of Defeat — first appeared, in part, in George William Russell's Sketches and Snapshots (1910)
“For we that fight till the world is free, We are not easy in victory: We have known each other too long, my brother, And fought each other, the world and we.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is all as of old, the empty clangour, The scrawled on a five-foot page, The huckster who, mocking holy anger, Painfully paints his face with rage. * * * We that fight till the world is free, We have no comfort in victory; We have read each other as Cain his brother, We know each other, these slaves and we.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Are they clinging to their crosses?”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Talk about the pews and steeples And the cash that goes therewith! But the souls of Christian peoples... Chuck it, Smith!”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Heaven shall forgive you Bridge at dawn, The clothes you wear — or do not wear — And Ladies’ Leap-frog on the lawn And dyes and drugs, and petits verres.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But for the Virtuous Things you do, The Righteous Work, the Public Care, It shall not be forgiven you.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’ll read "Jack Redskin on the Quest" And feed my brain with better things.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They spoke of Progress spiring round, Of Light and Mrs. Humphry Ward — It is not true to say I frowned, Or ran about the room and roared; I might have simply sat and snored — I rose politely in the club And said, “I feel a little bored; Will someone take me to a pub?”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Prince, Bayard would have smashed his sword To see the sort of knights you dub — Is that the last of them — O Lord Will someone take me to a pub?”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Prince, Prince-Elective on the modern plan, Fulfilling such a lot of People’s Wills, You take the Chiltern Hundreds while you can— A storm is coming on the Chiltern Hills.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The gallows in my garden, people say, Is new and neat and adequately tall.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The strangest whim has seized me. ... After all I think I will not hang myself to-day.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Prince, I can hear the trumpet of Germinal, The tumbrils toiling up the terrible way; Even to-day your royal head may fall — I think I will not hang myself to-day.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source