If the apple hit Newton’s nose, Newton’s nose hit the apple. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
It is a mathematical fact that if a line be not perfectly directed towards a point, it will actually go further away… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Obviously if any actions, even a lunatic's, can be causeless, determinism is done for. If the chain of causation can be broken… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The aesthete aims at harmony rather than beauty. If his hair does not match the mauve sunset against which he is standing,… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
If we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The full value of this life can only be got by fighting; the violent take it by storm. And if we have… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
How much larger your life would be if you were smaller in it... — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The perils, rewards, punishments, and fulfillments of an adventure must be real, or the adventure is only a shifting and heartless nightmare.… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Blasphemy is an artistic effect, because blasphemy depends upon a philosophical conviction. Blasphemy depends upon belief and is fading with it. If… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
If an editor can only make people angry enough, they will write half his newspaper for him for nothing. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Science is the study of the admitted laws of existence, which cannot prove a universal negative about whether those laws could ever… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
"The Universe repeats itself, with the possible exception of history." Of all earthly studies history is the only one that does not… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Thrift is the really romantic thing; economy is more romantic than extravagance... thrift is poetic because it is creative; waste is unpoetic… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
If a man does not talk to himself, it is because he is not worth talking to. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
A fad or heresy is the exaltation of something which even if true, is secondary or temporary in its nature against those… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
If you spell a word wrong you have some temptation to think it wrong. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
If I think the universe is triangular, and you think it is square, there cannot be room for two universes. We may… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
...I will praise the English climate till I die—even if I die of the English climate. There is no weather so good… — 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 grinding power of the plain words of the Gospel story is like the power of mill-stones, and those who can read… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The average man votes below himself; he votes with half a mind or a hundredth part of one. A man ought to… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Such professions as the soldier and the lawyer ... give ample opportunity for crimes but not much for mere illusions. ... If… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
If prosperity is regarded as the reward of virtue it will be regarded as the symptom of virtue. — 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
