“In most cases the name is unpoetical, although the fact is poetical. In the case of Smith, the name is so poetical… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“vers libre," (free verse) or nine-tenths of it, is not a new metre any more than sleeping in a ditch is a… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The greatest of poems is an inventory. Every kitchen tool becomes ideal because Crusoe might have dropped it in the sea. It… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“You say you are a poet of law; I saw you are a contradiction in terms. I only wonder there were not… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The great error consists in supposing that poetry is an unnatural form of language. We should all like to speak poetry at… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“This is the first principle of democracy: that the essential things in men are the things they hold in common, not the… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“On his last voyage he had seemed on the brink of success and had stood in the prow reciting a grand poem… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“I only say that at certain strange epochs it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, actually to remind… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Very deep things in our nature, some dim sense of the dependence of great things upon small, some dark suggestion that the… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“It is you who are unpoetical," replied the poet Syme. "If what you say of clerks is true, they can only be… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The fierce poet of the Middle Ages wrote, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here," over the gates of the lower world.… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“An artist is identical with an anarchist,' he cried. 'You might transpose the words anywhere. An anarchist is an artist. The man… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“It may well be on such a night of clouds and cruel colors that there is brought forth upon the earth such… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“But anyhow it is true that this, which is our first poem, might very well be our last poem too. It might… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“That young man with the long, auburn hair and the impudent face—that young man was not really a poet; but surely he… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“I? What am I?" roared the President, and he rose slowly to an incredible height, like some enormous wave about to arch… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Then may I ask you to swear by whatever gods or saints your religion involves that you will not reveal what I… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The poet will be discontented even in the streets of heaven. The poet is always in revolt." "There again," said Syme irritably,… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The difference between the poet and the mathematician is that the poet tries to get his head into the heavens while the… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“How did people come to chant rude poems while pulling certain ropes or gathering certain fruit, and why did nobody do anything… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“And the greatest of the poets, when he defined the poet, did not say that he gave us the universe or the… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“They are constantly colonists and emigrants ; they have the name of being at home in every country. But they are in… — 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
