Savages and modern artists are alike strangely driven to create something uglier than themselves. but the artists find it harder. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The poetry of art is in beholding the single tower; the poetry of nature in seeing the single tree; the poetry of… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Humility is the luxurious art of reducing ourselves to a point, not to a small thing or a large one, but to… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The modern world has far too little understanding of the art of keeping young. Its notion of progress has been to pile… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The sort of man who admires Italian art while despising Italian religion is a tourist and a cad. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The decay of society is praised by artists as the decay of a corpse is praised by worms. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs. It is a disease which arises from men no having sufficient power of… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Every work of art has one indispensable mark ... the center of it is simple, however much the fulfillment may be complicated. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Youth is always too serious, and just now it is too serious about frivolity. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things forbidden. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Everyone seems to assume that the unscrupulous parts of journalism will be the frivolous or jocular parts. This is against all ethical experience. Jokes… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
For Scotland has a double dose of the poison called heredity; the sense of blood in the aristocrat, the sense of doom in the… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Faith is always at a disadvantage; it is a perpetually defeated thing which survives all conquerors. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims permanence, like a dogma. People… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The triangle of truisms, of father, mother and child, cannot be destroyed; it can only destroy those civilizations which disregard it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Criticism is only words about words, and of what use are words about such words as these? — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place...The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Plato was only a Bernard Shaw who unfortunately made his jokes in Greek. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
