Quotes from Gilbert K. Chesterton

Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged.

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.

The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.

If I did not believe in God, I should still want my doctor, my lawyer and my banker to do so.

People in high life are hardened to the wants and distresses of mankind as surgeons are to their bodily pains.

The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.

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

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.

The man of the true religious tradition understands two things: liberty and obedience. The first means knowing what you really want. The second means knowing what you really trust.

Research is the search of people who don't know what they want.

We must be clear about what we want to paint. This adds a further principle to our previous list of principles. We have said we must be fond of this world, even in order to change it.

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

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

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

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

We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.

Being 'contented' ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and resigned to living in it; it ought to mean appreciating all there is in such a position.

The old assumption of the approximate impossibility of war really rested on a similar assumption about the impossibility of evil-and especially of evil in high places.

Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.

Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.

Coincidences are spiritual puns.

The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present.

It is better to speak wisdom foolishly like the saints than to speak folly wisely like the deans.