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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
Random G. K. Chesterton quote
299 quotes
Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed.
For human beings, being children, have the childish wilfulness and the childish secrecy. And they never have from the beginning of the world done what the wise men have seen to be inevitable.
The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)
Cockney artists profess to find the bourgeoisie dull; as if artists had any business to find anything dull.
Charles Dickens (1906)
Ivory may not be so white as snow, but the whole Arctic continent does not make ivory black.
The Defendant (1901)
I am not fighting a hopeless fight. People who have fought in real fights don't, as a rule.
The Flying Inn (1914)
A sober man may become a drunkard through being a coward. A brave man may become a coward through being a drunkard.
Charles Dickens (1906)
The pure modernist is merely a snob; he cannot bear to be a month behind the fashion.
All Things Considered (1908)
Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers another.
It is incomprehensible to me that any thinker can calmly call himself a modernist; he might as well call himself a Thursdayite.
All Things Considered (1908)
Fiction means the common things as seen by the uncommon people. Fairy tales mean the uncommon things as seen by the common people.
Charles Dickens (1906)
It is so easy to be solemn; it is so hard to be frivolous.
All Things Considered (1908)
And when anybody goes about on his hands and knees looking for a great man to worship, he is making sure that one man at any rate shall not be great.
Charles Dickens (1906)
The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious.
There is one creed: 'neath no world-terror's wing
If we could once understand the common clay of earth we should understand everything.
The Defendant (1901)
There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.
Heretics (1905)
The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men. As far as he is concerned he wipes out the world.
Orthodoxy (1908)
I tell you naught for your comfort,
The Ballad of the White Horse (1911)
It is only great men who take up a great space by not being there.
A foreigner is a man who laughs at everything except jokes. He is perfectly entitled to laugh at anything, so long as he realises, in a reverent and religious spirit, that he himself is laughable.
What I Saw in America (1922)
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