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G. K. Chesterton - From the Adventure category:
An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Advice category:
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Architecture category:
All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Art category:
Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Books category:
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Books category:
The most valuable book we can read, about countries we have visited, is that which recalls to us something that we did notice, but did not notice that we noticed. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Boredom category:
A yawn is a silent shout. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Change category:
All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But... if you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Construction category:
The whole difference between a construction and a creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Contentment category:
True contentment is a real, even an active virtue – not only affirmative but creative. It is the power of getting out of any situation all there is in it. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Contentment category:
A small artist is content with art; a great artist is content with nothing except everything. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Courage category:
The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life in order to keep it. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Criticism category:
A great deal of contemporary criticism reads to me like a man saying, 'Of course I do not like green cheese. I am very fond of brown sherry.' (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Deception category:
- The Innocence of Father Brown, 1911...
The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Deception category:
Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Dreams category:
There is at the back of every artist's mind... the landscape of his dreams; the strange flora and fauna of his own secret planet; the sort of thing he likes to think about. This general atmosphere... governs all his creations, however varied. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Drunkenness category:
Before the Roman came to Rye or out to severn strode, / The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Drunkenness category:
No animal ever invented anything so bad as drunkenness – or so good as drink. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Earth category:
We all feel the riddle of the earth without anyone to point it out. The mystery of life is the plainest part of it. The clouds and curtains of darkness, the confounding vapors, these are the daily weather of this world. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Education category:
There is nothing harder to learn than painting and nothing which most people take less trouble about learning. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Education category:
Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Energy category:
There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Energy category:
A man cannot have the energy to produce good art without having the energy to wish to pass beyond it. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Fun category:
Is ditchwater dull? Naturalists with microscopes have told me that it teems with quiet fun. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Gratitude category:
Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Greatness category:
There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Happiness category:
Happiness is a mystery like religion, and should never be rationalized. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Hope category:
Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Imagination category:
The original quality in any man of imagination is imagery. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Imagination category:
There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Individuality category:
The diseased pride [of artistic individualists] was not even conscious of a public interest, and would have found all political terms utterly tasteless and insignificant. It was no longer a question of one man one vote, but of one man one universe. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Insecurity category:
Romance is the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Insight category:
There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Interest category:
There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Journey category:
New roads: new ruts. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Limitations category:
Art is limitation. The essence of every picture is the frame. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Love category:
The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Love category:
The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Money category:
-A Miscellany of Men, 1912
To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Passion category:
Powerful men who have powerful passions use much of their strength in forging chains for themselves. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Patriotism category:
'My country, right or wrong,' is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, 'My mother, drunk or sober.' (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Play category:
Playing as children means playing is the most serious thing in the world. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Poetry category:
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Poetry category:
All slang is a metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Progress category:
As enunciated today, 'progress' is simply a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Religion category:
It has often been said, very truly, that religion is the thing that makes the ordinary man feel extraordinary; it is an equally important truth that religion is the thing that makes the extraordinary man feel ordinary. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Repose category:
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. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Seeing category:
If you look at a thing 999 times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it for the 1000th time, you are in danger of seeing it for the first time. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Simplicity category:
The modern world... has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Sincerity category:
We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Spirituality category:
Coincidences are spiritual puns. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Style category:
-on Tennyson...
He could not think up to the height of his own towering style. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Success category:
One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Temperament category:
The artistic temperament is a disease which afflicts amateurs. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Temperament category:
Artists of a large and wholesome vitality get rid of their art easily, as they breathe easily or perspire easily. But in artists of less force, the thing becomes a pressure, and produces a definite pain, which is called the artistic temperament. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Thought category:
Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Thought category:
Dogma does not mean the absence of thought but the end of thought. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Tradition category:
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Travel category:
The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Travel category:
The only way of catching a train I ever discovered is to miss the train before. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Truth category:
You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Truth category:
Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction... For fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Tyranny category:
Modern toleration is really a tyranny. It is a tyranny because it is a silence. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Universe category:
If I think the universe is triangular, and you think it is square, there cannot be room for two universes. We may argue politely, we may argue humanely, we may argue with great mutual benefit: but, obviously, we must argue. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Wisdom category:
A man cannot be wise enough to be a great artist without being wise enough to wish to be a philosopher. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Wonder category:
The world will never starve for want of wonders, but for want of wonder. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Words category:
They have invented a phrase, a phrase that is a black and white contradiction in two words - 'free-love' - as if a lover ever had been, or ever could be, free. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Words category:
The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Worry category:
Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. (G. K. Chesterton)
G. K. Chesterton - From the Writing category:
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. (G. K. Chesterton)
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