The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The central idea of poetry is the idea of guessing right, like a child. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Our digestions, going sacredly and silently right, that is the foundation of all poetry. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Free verse'? You may as well call sleeping in a ditch 'free architecture'. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The one stream of poetry which is continually flowing is slang. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be… — Gilbert 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. — 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
The sincere love of books has nothing to do with cleverness or stupidity any more than any other sincere love. It is… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
What the world wants, what the world is waiting for, is not Modern Poetry or Classical Poetry or Neo-Classical Poetry - but… — 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
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
Sir Hiram Maxim is a genuine and typical example of the man of science, romantic, excitable, full of real but somewhat obvious… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Literary men are being employed to praise a big business man personally, as men used to praise a king. They not only… — 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 are generally honest. Complete solemnity is almost always dishonest. The writer of the snippet merely refers to a frivolous and fugitive fact in a frivolous and fugitive way. The writer of the leading article has to… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share
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 nail in his boot that prevented him from going on. For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which made him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share
Plato was only a Bernard Shaw who unfortunately made his jokes in Greek. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
