110+ G. K. Chesterton Quotes On God, Truth And Family

G. K. Chesterton was an English writer, poet, philosopher, dramatist, journalist, and literary and art critic. He was known for writing the Father Brown detective stories and the book Orthodoxy. He was a prolific writer of essays, poetry, novels, and short stories, and is still widely read today. Following is our collection on famous quotes by G. K. Chesterton on god, truth, family.

Top 10 G. K. Chesterton Quotes

1. To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.
2. The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist see what he has come to see.
3. The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.
4. You cannot love a thing without wanting to fight for it.
5. All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.
6. When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.
7. The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.
8. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.
9. A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.
10. What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

G. K. Chesterton Image Quotes

The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost. — G. K. Chesterton

You cannot love a thing without wanting to fight for it. — G. K. Chesterton

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak. — G. K. Chesterton

A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things. — G. K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton Short Quotes

• It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.
• Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.
• Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.
• How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.
• The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.
• A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.
• Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.
• It is as healthy to enjoy sentiment as to enjoy jam.
• A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.
• The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything.

G. K. Chesterton Quotes About God

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache. — G. K. Chesterton

We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbor. — G. K. Chesterton

Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods. — G. K. Chesterton

Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head. — G. K. Chesterton

Those thinkers who cannot believe in any gods often assert that the love of humanity would be in itself sufficient for them; and so, perhaps, it would, if they had it. — G. K. Chesterton

O God of earth and altar, Bow down and hear our cry, Our earthly rulers falter, Our people drift and die; The walls of gold entomb us, The swords of scorn divide, Take not thy thunder from us, But take away our pride. — G. K. Chesterton

White is not a mere absence of color; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. God paints in many colors; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white. — G. K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton Quotes About Truth

In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it. — G. K. Chesterton

You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it. — G. K. Chesterton

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

Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it. — G. K. Chesterton

Half a truth is better than no politics. — G. K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton Quotes About Life

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another. — G. K. Chesterton

The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them. — G. K. Chesterton

The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them. — G. K. Chesterton

The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life. — G. K. Chesterton

But 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

The full value of this life can only be got by fighting; the violent take it by storm. And if we have accepted everything we have missed something -- war. This life of ours is a very enjoyable fight, but a very miserable truce. — G. K. Chesterton

People in high life are hardened to the wants and distresses of mankind as surgeons are to their bodily pains. — G. K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton Quotes About Education

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated. — G. K. Chesterton

The Museum is not meant either for the wanderer to see by accident or for the pilgrim to see with awe. It is meant for the mere slave of a routine of self-education to stuff himself with every sort of incongruous intellectual food in one indigestible meal. — G. K. Chesterton

Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know. — G. K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton Quotes About People

There are no uninteresting things, there are only uninterested people. — G. K. Chesterton

People generally quarrel because they cannot argue. — G. K. Chesterton

Journalism consists largely in saying Lord James is dead to people who never knew Lord James was alive. — G. K. Chesterton

The worst of work nowadays is what happens to people when they cease to work. — G. K. Chesterton

There are many definite methods, honest and dishonest, which make people rich; the only instinct I know of which does it is that instinct which theological Christianity crudely describes as the sin of avarice. — G. K. Chesterton

But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet. Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget. — G. K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton Quotes About World

The home is not the one tame place in the world of adventure. It is the one wild place in the world of rules and set tasks. — G. K. Chesterton

Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged. — G. K. Chesterton

The world will never starve for want of wonders, but for want of wonder. — G. K. Chesterton

Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich. — G. K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton Quotes About Wrong

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. — G. K. Chesterton

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered. — G. K. Chesterton

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. — G. K. Chesterton

Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc. — G. K. Chesterton

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. — G. K. Chesterton

My country wrong or right, is like saying my mother, drunk or sober. — G. K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton Famous Quotes And Sayings

The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost. — G. K. Chesterton

You cannot love a thing without wanting to fight for it. — G. K. Chesterton

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak. — G. K. Chesterton

A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things. — G. K. Chesterton

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past. — G. K. Chesterton

Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. — G. K. Chesterton

You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution. — G. K. Chesterton

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. — G. K. Chesterton

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act. — G. K. Chesterton

Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed. — G. K. Chesterton

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

The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself. — G. K. Chesterton

I believe in getting into hot water. I think it keeps you clean. — G. K. Chesterton

We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity. — G. K. Chesterton

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity. — G. K. Chesterton

One may understand the Cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. — G. K. Chesterton

Their is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect. — G. K. Chesterton

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry. — G. K. Chesterton

One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time. — G. K. Chesterton

Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalized. — G. K. Chesterton

If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not. — G. K. Chesterton

Do not free the camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel. — G. K. Chesterton

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

There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great. — G. K. Chesterton

Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. — G. K. Chesterton

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame. — G. K. Chesterton

The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered is to miss the train before. — G. K. Chesterton

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. — G. K. Chesterton

If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride. — G. K. Chesterton

Evil comes at leisure like the disease. Good comes in a hurry like the doctor. — G. K. Chesterton

Merely having an open mind is nothing; the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid. — G. K. Chesterton

A yawn is a silent shout. — G. K. Chesterton

I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees. — G. K. Chesterton

Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle. — G. K. Chesterton

Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit. — G. K. Chesterton

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it. — G. K. Chesterton

The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men. — G. K. Chesterton

Soldiers have many faults, but they have one redeeming merit; they are never worshippers of force. Soldiers more than any other men are taught severely and systematically that might is not right. The fact is obvious. The might is in the hundred men who obey. The right (or what is held to be right) is in the one man who commands them. — G. K. Chesterton

With any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain healthy humiliation. — G. K. Chesterton

Silence is the unbearable repartee. — G. K. Chesterton

The mere brute pleasure of reading --the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing. — G. K. Chesterton

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried. — G. K. Chesterton

The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. He is the man who has lost everything except his reason. — G. K. Chesterton

True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare. — G. K. Chesterton

Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men. — G. K. Chesterton

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. — G. K. Chesterton

Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs. — G. K. Chesterton

We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners. — G. K. Chesterton

The golden age only comes to men when they have forgotten gold. — G. K. Chesterton

Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal man does not amaze. — G. K. Chesterton

When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility. — G. K. Chesterton

The present condition of fame is merely fashion. — G. K. Chesterton

Angels fly because they take themselves lightly. — G. K. Chesterton

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

The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us. — G. K. Chesterton

We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end. — G. K. Chesterton

Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt. — G. K. Chesterton

The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in. — G. K. Chesterton

Your next-door neighbor is not a man; he is an environment. He is the barking of a dog; he is the noise of a piano; he is a dispute about a party wall; he is drains that are worse than yours, or roses that are better than yours. — G. K. Chesterton

Psychoanalysis is confession without absolution. — G. K. Chesterton

They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords. Lords without anger and honor, who dare not carry their swords. They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes; They look at our labor and laughter as a tired man looks at flies. — G. K. Chesterton

The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations. — G. K. Chesterton

Some men never feel small, but these are the few men who are. — G. K. Chesterton

To be clever enough to get all the money, one must be stupid enough to want it. — G. K. Chesterton

Life Lessons by G. K. Chesterton

1. G.K. Chesterton taught that life should be lived with joy and enthusiasm, and that we should embrace the beauty of the world around us.
2. He believed that the most important thing in life was to be open to new ideas and experiences, and to never stop learning and growing.
3. He also encouraged us to be generous and kind to others, and to always strive to make the world a better place.