Quotes from Gilbert K. Chesterton

Excuse me if I enjoy myself rather obviously! I don't often have the luck to have a dream like this. It is new to me for a nightmare to lead me to a lobster. It is commonly the other way.

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

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.

Let a man walk ten miles steadily on a hot summer's day along a dusty English road, and he will soon discover why beer was invented.

Stick to the man who looks out of the window and tries to understand the world. Keep clear of the man who looks in at the window and tries to understand you.

Nobody notices postmen, yet they have passions like other men.

The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.

No man can break any of the Ten Commandments. He can only break himself against them.

The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of something he cannot understand.

Think of all those ages through which men have had the courage to die, and then remember that we have actually fallen to talking about having the courage to live.

There are no new lies, no new heresies. Man is simply not that creative.

The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything.

Bigotry may be roughly defined as the anger of men who have no opinions.

When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.

A businessman is the only man who is forever apologizing for his occupation.

I will go forth as a real outlaw," he said, "and as men do robbery on the highway I will do right on the highway; and it will be counted a wilder crime.

If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.

People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.

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

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

Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.

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

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals nay it is treachery to comrades.