Quotes from G.K. Chesterton

There is no way in which a man can earn a star or deserve a sunset.

How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it.

To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.

London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation.

Just at present you only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the lamp by the light of the tree.

When men have come to the edge of a precipice, it is the lover of life who has the spirit to leap backwards, and only the pessimist who continues to believe in progress.

I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it.

There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.

The reason angels can fly is because they take themselves lightly.

There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and a tired man who wants a book to read.

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.

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

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.

A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.

Facts by themselves can often feed the flame of madness, because sanity is a spirit.

A large section of the intelligentsia seems wholly devoid of intelligence.

Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances that we know to be desperate.

Nowadays a citizen can hardly distinguish between a tax and a fine, except that the fine is generally much lighter.

One must somehow find a way of loving the world without trusting it; somehow one must love the world without being worldly.

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.

The classes that wash most are those that work least.

The only people who seem to have nothing to do with the education of the children are the parents.

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds

What a glorious garden of wonders the lights of Broadway would be to anyone lucky enough to be unable to read.