“We are all revenants; all living Christians are dead pagans walking about.” — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“All men are tragic...All men are comic...Every man is important if he loses his life; and every man is funny if he… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Men represent the deliberative and democratic element in life. Woman represents the despotic.” — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“When Nietszche says, "A new commandment I give to you, be hard" he is really saying, "A new commandment I give to… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Stories of magic alone can express my sense that life is not only a pleasure but a kind of eccentric privilege.” — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“We now have a strong desire for living combined with a strange carelessness about dying. We desire life like water and yet… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung; The world was very old indeed when you and I… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“He was one of those who are driven early in life into too conservative an attitude by the bewildering folly of most… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Life (according to the faith) is very like a serial story in a magazine: life ends with the promise (or menace) "to… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“We think the cat superior because we have (or most of us have) a particular philosophy to the effect that life is… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“But nearly all of the people I have ever met in this western society in which I live would agree to the… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen. …there is in life an element of elfin coincidence which people on… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The perplexity of life arises from their being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“What is the modern mind?" asked Grant. "Oh, it's enlightened, you know, and progressive --and faces the facts of life seriously." At… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Our existence may not be an intelligible justice, or even a recognizable wrong. But our existence is still a story. In the… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“And under all this vast illusion of the cosmopolitan planet, with its empires and its Reuter's agency, the real life of man… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“It is in our own daily life that we are to look for the portents and the prodigies… Compared with this life,… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are.… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The last lingering shadow of the Jesuit, gliding behind curtains and concealing himself in cupboards, faded from my young life about the… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Can you not see," I said, "that fairy tales in their essence are quite solid and straightforward; but that this everlasting fiction… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Now for St. Francis nothing was ever in the background. We might say that his mind had no background, except perhaps that… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Nobody can understand the greatness of the thirteenth century, who does not realize that it was a great growth of new things… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“This very pride in keeping his word was that he was keeping it to miscreants. It was his last triumph over these… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“A Second Childhood.” When all my days are ending And I have no song to sing, I think that I shall not… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The vision which has been so faintly suggested in these pages has never been confined to monks or even to friars. It… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“So far as he could prevent it, Dickens never permitted a day of his life to be ordinary. There was always some… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“It is a good thing for a man to live in a family for the same reason that it is a good… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that it must be a picture made… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“We say that the most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages.… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“In short, there is in life an element of elfin coincidence which people reckoning on the prosaic may perpetually miss.” — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“At any innocent tea-table we may easily hear a man say, "Life is not worth living." We regard it as we regard… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“If a man prefers nothing I can give him nothing. But nearly all people I have ever met in this western society… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Until we realize that things might not be, we cannot realize that things are. Until we see the background of darkness, we… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“It is not only possible to say a great deal in praise of play; it is really possible to say the highest… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice. He can only… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.” — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
