Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

We should always endeavor to wonder at the permanent thing, not at the mere exception. We should be startled by the sun, and not by the eclipse. We should wonder less at the earthquake, and wonder more at the earth.

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There is no better test of a man's ultimate chivalry and integrity than how he behaves when he is wrong... A stiff apology is a second insult.

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It has always been one of my unclerical sermons to myself, that that remark which Peter made on seeing the vision of a single hour, ought to be made by us all, in contemplating every panoramic change in the long Vision we call life... "It is good for us to be here - it is good for us to be here", repeating itself eternally.

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Time and again, the Faith has to all appearances gone to the dogs. But each time, it was the dog that died.

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It was the people who did not care who filled the world with fire and oppression. It was the hands of the indifferent that lit the faggots; it was the hands of the indifferent that turned the rack.

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America has a genius for the encouragement of fame.

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If we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse.

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Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

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Education is implication. It is not the things you say which children respect; when you say things, they very commonly laugh and do the opposite. It is the things you assume which really sink into them. It is the things you forget even to teach that they learn.

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There is also an insulting speech about 'one grey day just like another'. You might as well talk about one green tree like another.

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But there is in everything a reasonable division of labour. I have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it.

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A great classic means a man whom one can praise without having read.

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Political Economy means that everybody except politicians must be economical.

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There again," said Syme irritably, "what is there poetical about being in revolt? You might as well say that it is poetical to be sea-sick. Being sick is a revolt. Both being sick and being rebellious may be the wholesome thing on certain desperate occasions; but I'm hanged if I can see why they are poetical...It is things going right," he cried, "that is poetical! Our digestions, for instance, going sacredly and silently right, that is the foundation of all poetry...the most poetical thing in the world is not being sick.

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[There is] one distinctly human thing - the story. There can be as good science about a turnip as about a man. ... [Or philosophy, or theology] ...There can be, without any question at all, as good higher mathematics about a turnip as about a man. But I do not think, though I speak in a manner somewhat tentative, that there could be as good a novel written about a turnip as a man.

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A dead thing goes with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.

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When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?

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There is no such thing as education. The thing is merely a loose phrase for the passing on to others of whatever truth or virtue we happen to have ourselves. It is typical of our time that the more doubtful we are about the value of philosophy, the more certain we are about the value of education. That is to say, the more doubtful we are about whether we have any truth, the more certain we are (apparently) that we can teach it to our children.

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All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death.

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A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.

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