Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

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

There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.

Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.

True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare.

I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.

And they that rule in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they have no graves as yet.

Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.

The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.

The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life.

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.

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

The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.

Those thinkers who cannot believe in any gods often assert that the love of humanity would be in itself sufficient for them; and so, perhaps, it would, if they had it.

Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.