Gilbert K. Chesterton

Thanks are the highest form of thought.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The true object of human life is play.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

New roads; new ruts.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The moderns do not realize modernity.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Marriage is a sort of poetical see-saw.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Nothing is certain by uncertainty.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

A yawn is a silent shout.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Man is at his tallest when he bows.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

You'll never find the solution if you don't see the problem.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Modern broad-mindedness benefits the rich; and benefits nobody else.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

America has a genius for the encouragement of fame.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Every heresy has been an effort to narrow the Church.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

No man's really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

...a figure of speech can often get into a crack too small for a definition.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The human race is always trying this dodge of making everything entirely easy; but the difficulty which it shifts off one thing…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

What we call emancipation is always and of necessity simply the free choice of the soul between one set of limitations and…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

'My country, right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

When a man ceases to believe in god, he does not believe in nothing. He believes in everything.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

When once you have got hold of a vulgar joke, you may be certain that you have got hold of a subtle…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Nothing is so remote from us as the thing which is not old enough to be history and not new enough to…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

He is only a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of the Conservative.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this, that by its…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

This is, first and last, the real value of Christmas; in so far as the mythology remains at all it is a…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

It isn't that they can't see the solution. It's that they can't see the problem. They can't see the problem if they…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Islam was something like a Christian heresy. The early heresies had been full of mad reversals and evasions of the Incarnation, rescuing…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The only thing that has kept the race of men from the mad extremes of the convent and the pirate-galley, the night-club…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The lunatic is the man who lives in a small world but thinks it is a large one; he is the man…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Your next-door neighbor is not a man; he is an environment. He is the barking of a dog; he is the noise…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

As an explanation of the world materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has the quality of a madman's arguments; we…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

It might reasonably be maintained that the true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

When people talk as if the Crusades were nothing more than an aggressive raid against Islam, they seem to forget in the…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The modern mind will accept nothing on authority, but will accept anything on no authority. Say that the Bible or the Pope…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The last few decades have been marked by a special cultivation of the romance of the future. We seem to have made…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The timidity of the child or the savage is entirely reasonable; they are alarmed at this world, because this world is a…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

I doubt if anyone of any tenderness or imagination can see the hand of a child and not be a little frightened…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The Sentimentalist, roughly speaking, is the man who wants to eat his cake and have it. He has no sense of honor…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton