Quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it, so I signed up for acting instead.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Un...

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind.

Gilbert K. Chesterton