Quotes from Gilbert K. Chesterton

What life and death may be to a turkey is not my business; but the soul of Scrooge and the body of Cratchit are my business.

The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense.

He who has no sympathy with myths has no sympathy with men.

The more truly we can see life as a fairytale, the more clearly the tale resolves itself into war with the dragon who is wasting fairyland.

Real development is not leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them, as from a root.

Some of the most frantic lies on the face of life are told with modesty and restraint; for the simple reason that only modesty and restraint will save them.

A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.

Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

The best kind of giving is thanksgiving.

When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?

Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich.

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

In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was logic.

You have not wasted your time; you have helped to save the world. We are not buffoons, but very desperate men at war with a vast conspiracy.

Employers will give time to eat, time to sleep; they are in terror of a time to think.

It is the beginning of all true criticism of our time to realize that it has really nothing to say, at the very moment when it has invented so tremendous a trumpet for saying it.

A great city is the place to escape the true drama of provincial life, and find solace in fantasy.

When a person has found something which he prefers to life itself, he for the first time has begun to live.

Adventure is the champagne of life, but I prefer my champagne and my adventures dry.

My life is passed in making bad jokes and seeing them turn into true prophecies.

She had never really listened to anyone in her life; which, some said, was why she had survived.

The only object of liberty is life.

I am concerned with a certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been meekly ratified by the mere facts.

With any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain healthy humiliation.