Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Famous Quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton
Born: 1874-05-29
Died: 1936-06-14
Gilbert K. Chesterton Biography
A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Life ] ***
A good novel tells us the truth about it's hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Writing ] ***
All government is an ugly necessity.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Government ] ***
Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Angel ] ***
Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Art ] ***
Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Art ] ***
For fear of the newspapers politicians are dull, and at last they are too dull even for the newspapers.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Political ] ***
Half a truth is better than no politics.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Political ] [ Truth ] ***
I believe in getting into hot water. I think it keeps you clean.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Trouble ] ***
I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Golf ] ***
If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
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If there were no God, there would be no atheists.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ God ] [ Atheist ] ***
It is terrible to contemplete how few politicians are hanged.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Political ] ***
Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Religion ] ***
Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Art ] ***
Many clever men like you have trusted to civilisation. Many clever Babylonians, many clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilisation, what there is particularly immortal about yours?
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Civilization ] ***
Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Evil ] ***
Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Criminal ] ***
No animal ever invented anything as bad as drunkenness - or as good as drink.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Drinking ] [ Drunk ] ***
People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Argument ] ***
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Food ] [ Poetry ] ***
Ten thousand women marched through the streets of London saying 'we will not be dictated to,' and then went off to become stenographers.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Friendship ] [ Bible ] [ Enemy ] ***
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Christian ] ***
The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
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There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Thieves respect property; they merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.
-- (The Man Who Was Thursday, 1908)
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Respect ] [ Property ] ***
To be clever enough to get all the money, one must be stupid enough to want it.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Money ] ***
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Truth is sacred and if you tell the truth too often nobody will believe it.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Truth ] ***
We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbour.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Friendship ] [ Enemy ] ***
When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Political ] ***
When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven't got any.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Reason ] ***
You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Truth ] ***
You cannot grow a beard in a moment of passion.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
More quotations on: [ Planning ] ***
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