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G. K. Chesterton Quotes
1874–1936 England
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was a British writer whose prolific and diverse output included works of philosophy, ontology, poetry, play writing, journalism, public lecturing and debating, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics (particularly for Catholicism), and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction. He has been called the "prince of paradox".
England Autobiographers Conservatives Critics Essayists Also known as: Chesterton, Chesterton, G. K., Chesterton, Gilbert Keith, G K Chesterton, G.K. Chesterton, GK Chesterton
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299 quotes
There is truth in every ancient fable, and there is here even something of it in the fancy that finds the symbol of the Republic in the bird that bore the bolts of Jove.
What I Saw in America (1922)
Ritual is a need of the human soul — nay, it is rather a need of the human body, like exercise.
Marriage is a duel to the death, which no man of honour should decline.
Manalive (1912)
Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.
Let the thunder break on man and beast and bird
Poems (1917)
Every man speaks of public opinion, and means by public opinion, public opinion minus his opinion.
Employers will give time to eat, time to sleep; they are in terror of a time to think.
Utopia of Usurers (1917)
The academic mind reflects infinity, and is full of light by the simple process of being shallow and standing still.
Manalive (1912)
One of the actual and certain consequences of the idea that all men are equal is immediately to produce very great men.
Charles Dickens (1906)
When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it.
The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.
It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.
All Things Considered (1908)
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.
Robert Browning (1903)
There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect. Men do not quarrel about the meaning of sunsets; they never dispute that the hawthorn says the best and wittiest thing about the spring.
The Defendant (1901)
Irreverence is a very servile parasite of reverence; and has starved with its starving lord.
Where All Roads Lead (1922)
When they have no explanation to offer, they give short dignified replies, disdainful of the ignorance of the multitude.
In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox.
The Thing (1929)
Our chiefs said 'Done,' and I did not deem it;
Poems (1917)
A man must be orthodox upon most things, or he will never even have time to preach his own heresy.
George Bernard Shaw (1909)
When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven't got any.
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