G. K. Chesterton Quotes

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

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

There are two ways to get enough: One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.

You cannot love a thing without wanting to fight for it.

There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.

All architecture is great architecture after sunset;

perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.

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

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.

What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

There are two ways to get enough. One is to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.

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.

It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.

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

Angeles fly because they take themselves lightly.

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.

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

Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.

Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.

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

You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.

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.

There are no uninteresting things, there are only uninterested people.

The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.

How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.

A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction.

Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms.

It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.

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

It is as healthy to enjoy sentiment as to enjoy jam.

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.

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.

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.

Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist.

Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered.

An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.

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.

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

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

The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything.

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

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

We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity.

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

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.

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

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.

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

One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time.

Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalized.

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.

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

If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him.

And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.