Quotes from Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

We talk of wild animals but man is the only wild animal. It is man that has broken out. All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of the tribe or type.

We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.

Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal man does not amaze.

That young man with the long, auburn hair and the impudent face - that young man was not really a poet; but surely he was a poem.

At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper. . . .

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

A sober man may become a drunkard through being a coward. A brave man may become a coward through being a drunkard.

A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed.

A detective story generally describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. A modern philosophic story generally describes six dead men discussing how any man can possibly be alive.

The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs. It is a disease which arises from men no having sufficient power of expression to utter and get rid of the element of art in their being.

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

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

He may be mad, but there's method in his madness. There nearly always is method in madness. It's what drives men mad, being methodical.

Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.

In all legends men have thought of women as sublime separately but horrible in a herd.

Women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes.

It was not the house that grew dull, but I that grew dull in it. My wife was better than all women, and yet I could not feel it.

Women have a thirst for order and beauty as for something physical; there is a strange female power of hating ugliness and waste as good men can only hate sin and bad men virtue.

I should favour anything that would increase the present enormous authority of women and their creative action in their own homes. The average woman...is a despot; the average man is a serf.

The average woman is at the head of something with which she can do as she likes; the average man has to obey orders and do nothing else.

Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf; is better than a whole loaf.

I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.

The beautification of the world is not a work of nature, but a work of art, then it involves an artist.