Quotes by Gilbert Keith Chesterton
In a world flagrant with the failures of civilization, what is there particularly immortal about our own?
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith
Psychoanalysis is confession without absolution.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith
Journalism largely consists in saying "Lord Jones is dead" to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith
If a man called Christmas Day a mere hypocritical excuse for drunkeness and gluttony, that would be false, but it would have a fact hidden in it somewhere. But when Bernard Shaw says that Christmas Day is only a conspiracy kept up by Poulterers and wine merchants from strictly business motives, then he says something which is not so much false as startling and arrestingly foolish. He might as well say that the two sexes were invented by jewellers who wanted to sell wedding rings.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith
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.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith
I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith
The great majority of people will go on observing forms that cannot be explained; they will keep Christmas Day with Christmas gifts and Christmas benedictions; they will continue to do it; and some day suddenly wake up and discover why.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith
Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith
Though I believe in liberalism, I find it difficult to believe in liberals.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith
There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith
The reason angels can fly is because they take themselves lightly.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith
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.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith
Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith
Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith
Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith
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.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith
Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith
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.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith