G.K. Chesterton Quotes

Journalism largely consists of saying `Lord Jones is Dead` to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.

The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.

I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.

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.

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.

Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.

The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob.

Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.

Don`t ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.

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

I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.

All slang is a metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

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

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.

You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.

Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.

Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.

If there were no God, there would be no Atheists.

"My country, right or wrong," is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, "My mother, drunk or sober."

The people who are the most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all.

The most astonishing thing about miracles is that they happen.

I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it.

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.

It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.

By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece.

The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.

Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.

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.

Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.

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

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

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.

But a somewhat more liberal and sympathetic examination of mankind will convince us that the cross is even older than the gibbet, that voluntary suffering was before and independent of compulsory; and in short that in most important matters a man has always been free to ruin himself if he chose.

No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man`s education is complete.

It isn`t that they can`t see the solution. It`s that they can`t see the problem.

`My country, right or wrong` is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying `My mother, drunk or sober.`

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

Children are innocent and love justice, while most adults are wicked and prefer mercy.

There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.

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.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.

Wit is a sword; it is meant to make people feel the point as well as see it.

The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul

I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.