Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

But a somewhat more liberal and sympathetic examination of mankind will convince us that the cross is even older than the gibbet, that voluntary suffering was before and independent of compulsory; and in short that in most important matters a man has always been free to ruin himself if he chose.

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We actually love ourselves more than we love joy.

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The whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a perpetual crisis.

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Mankind is not a tribe of animals to which we owe compassion. Mankind is a club to which we owe our subscription.

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It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things forbidden.

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The English are no nearer than they were a hundred years ago to knowing what Jefferson really meant when he said that God had created all men equal.

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Nine times out of ten it is the coarse word that condemns an evil, and the refined word that excuses it.

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Precisely because our political speeches are meant to be reported, they are not worth reporting. Precisely because they are carefully designed to be read, nobody reads them.

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

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If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?

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Laughter has something in it common with the ancient words of faith and inspiration; it unfreezes pride and unwinds secrecy; it makes people forget themselves in the presence of something greater than themselves.

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America is the only nation in the world that is founded on creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature.

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I am not absentminded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.

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Altruists, with thin, weak voices, denounce Christ as an egoist. Egoists (with even thinner and weaker voices) denounce Him as an altruist.

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Religious and philosophical beliefs are, indeed, as dangerous as fire, and nothing can take from them that beauty of danger. But there is only one way of really guarding ourselves against the excessive danger of them, and that is to be steeped in philosophy and soaked in religion.

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Every man speaks of public opinion, and means by public opinion, public opinion minus his opinion.

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Stated baldly, charity certainly means one of two things–pardoning unpardonable acts, or loving unlovable people.

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At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper. . . .

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The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.

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It never occurred to him to be spiritually won over to the enemy. Many moderns, inured to a weak worship of intellect and force, might have wavered in their allegiance under this oppression of a great personality. . . . But this was a kind of modern meanness to which Syme could not sink even in his extreme morbidity. Like any man, he was coward enough to fear great force; but he was not coward enough to admire it.

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