Books Quotes by G.K. Chesterton

38 Books quotes by G.K. Chesterton

Chesterton jokes about blue‑stockings and detectives, then flips the idea. He says reading bad literature can be more useful than good, because it shows us the mind of many people. He also notes that a poem can hint at a crime before it happens.

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“Is literature better, is politics better, for having discarded the moralist and the philosopher?”

G.K. Chesterton

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“The human race, to which so many of my readers belong...”

G.K. Chesterton

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“The author challenges how much sanctity has to do with sameness, as he says saints are as different from each other as…

G.K. Chesterton

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“The ordinary detective discovers from a ledger or a diary that a crime has been committed. We discover from a book of…

G.K. Chesterton

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“What are blue-stockings?' asked Tommy. Naturally you don't know,' replied the other. 'If you did, you would sympathize more with Bluebeard. They…

G.K. Chesterton

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“The only possible excuse for this book is that it is an answer to a challenge. Even a bad shot is dignified…

G.K. Chesterton

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“In one sense at any rate it is more valuable to read bad literature than good literature. Good literature may tell us…

G.K. Chesterton

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“Somewhere embedded in every ordinary book are the five or six words for which really all the rest will be written.”

G.K. Chesterton

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“I have called this book "What Is Wrong with the World?" and the upshot of the title can be easily and clearly…

G.K. Chesterton

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“La sua logica è straordinariamente lucida e fredda e invariabilmente lo porta fuori strada. Ma all'improvviso interviene la poesia in lui a…

G.K. Chesterton

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“If you want to succeed at whist, either be a good whist-player, or play with marked cards. You may want a book…

G.K. Chesterton

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“Whatever the word "great" means, Dickens was what it means. Even the fastidious and unhappy who cannot read his books without a…

G.K. Chesterton

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“They are constantly colonists and emigrants ; they have the name of being at home in every country. But they are in…

G.K. Chesterton

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“Nothing is important except the fate of the soul; and literature is only redeemed from an utter triviality ... by the fact…

G.K. Chesterton

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“I have been asked to explain what I meant by saying that "Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity." I have…

G.K. Chesterton

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“I earnestly hope that all children will spoil this book by painting the illustrations. I wanted to do this myself but the…

G.K. Chesterton

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“You can find all the new ideas in the old books; only there you will find them balanced, kept in their place,…

G.K. Chesterton

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“America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and…

G.K. Chesterton

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“There has appeared in our time a particular class of books and articles which I sincerely and solemnly think may be called…

G.K. Chesterton

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“The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will…

G.K. Chesterton

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“All the terms used in the science books, 'law,' 'necessity,' 'order,' 'tendency,' and so on, are really unintellectual … The only words…

G.K. Chesterton

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“If the characters are not wicked, the book is." We must tell stories the way God does, stories in which a sister…

G.K. Chesterton

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“People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of…

G.K. Chesterton

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“To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labours, and holidays; to be Whitely within a certain area, providing…

G.K. Chesterton

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“Just as we all like love tales because there is an instinct of sex, we all like astonishing tales because they touch…

G.K. Chesterton

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“In one sense, at any rate, it is more valuable to read bad literature than good literature. Good literature may tell us…

G.K. Chesterton

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“We read a good novel not in order to know more people, but in order to know fewer. Instead of the humming…

G.K. Chesterton

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“To-day all our novels and newspapers will be found to be swarming with numberless allusions to the popular character called a Cave-Man.…

G.K. Chesterton

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“Does the reader realise the despair that falls upon the hapless Catholic journalist at such moments; or how wild a prayer he…

G.K. Chesterton

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“But there is another possible attitude towards the records of the past, and I have never been able to understand why it…

G.K. Chesterton

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“Liberalism has been degraded into liberality. Men have tried to turn "revolutionise" from a transitive to an intransitive verb. The Jacobin could…

G.K. Chesterton

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“And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am…

G.K. Chesterton

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“The present importance of the Book of Job cannot be expressed adequately even by saying that it is the most interesting of…

G.K. Chesterton

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“It was the outstanding fact about St. Thomas [Aquinas] that he loved books and lived on books ... When asked for what…

G.K. Chesterton

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“A finished tale may give a man immortality in the light and literary sense; but an unfinished tale suggests another immortality, more…

G.K. Chesterton

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“A man reading the Dickens novel wished that it might never end. Men read a Dickens story six times because they knew…

G.K. Chesterton

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“I cannot understand the people who take literature seriously; but I can love them, and I do. Out of my love I…

G.K. Chesterton

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“We have all read in scientific books, and, indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name.…

G.K. Chesterton

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More by G.K. Chesterton

“I never use paradox. The statements I make are wearisome and obvious common sense. I have even been driven to the tedium of reading…

G.K. Chesterton

“Nothing, again, could be more prosaic and impenetrable than the domestic energies of Miss Diana Duke. But Innocent had somehow blundered on the discovery…

G.K. Chesterton

“The mass of men have been forced to be gay about the little things, but sad about the big ones. Nevertheless (I offer my…

G.K. Chesterton

“ask yourself how many people you have met who grumbled at a thing as incurable, and how many who attacked it as curable? How…

G.K. Chesterton

“The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do…

G.K. Chesterton

“Internationalism is in any case hostile to democracy….The only purely popular government is local, and founded on local knowledge. The citizens can rule the…

G.K. Chesterton

“There was a short railway official travelling up to the terminus, three fairly short market-gardeners picked up two stations afterwards, one very short widow…

G.K. Chesterton

“Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.”

G.K. Chesterton

“Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.”

G.K. Chesterton

“There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected…

G.K. Chesterton

“Man, by a blind instinct, knew that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first. The authority of priests to absolve,…

G.K. Chesterton

“It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act…

G.K. Chesterton

“But in order that life should be a story or romance to us, it is necessary that a great part of it, at any…

G.K. Chesterton

“Buddhism seeks after God with the largest conception it can find, the all-producing and all-absorbing One; Christianity seeks after God with the most elementary…

G.K. Chesterton

“Man is more himself, more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing and grief superficial.”

G.K. Chesterton