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A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.


Gilbert K. Chesterton

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A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
G. K. CHESTERTON A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
G.K. CHESTERTON Pornography tells lies about women. But pornography tells the truth about men.
JOHN STOLTENBERG With a good friend it’s not always how long you knew them, but how well you did.
JANET GURTLER THE TRUTH ABOUT US If you love her. If you want her to stay. Fight for her.
JANET GURTLER THE TRUTH ABOUT US No one ever tells us the truth, even those we love.
ANNA HELD An enemy is anyone who tells the truth about you.
ELBERT HUBBARD An enemy is anyone who tells the truth about you
ELBERT HUBBARD When a man really tells the truth, the first truth he tells is that he himself is a liar.
G.K. CHESTERTON Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a m...
G. K. CHESTERTON Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a m...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON He tells me there'll be no sex in it, and I expect there won't. It's a very moral novel about life t...
BRIAN MCMASTER In every first novel the hero is the author as Christ or Faust.
OSCAR WILDE No one tells the truth about indifference. Indifference is the next best thing to love.
MARTY RUBIN I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the auth...
EDITH WHARTON A prophet is not a man who tells the future; he is a man who tells the truth.
HAROLD KUSHNER This survey tells us that candidates who support pre-K have a better chance of winning at the polls.
CECILIA ZALKIND because it always tells you the truth.
CAROLINE RHEA A pessimist is a man who tells the truth prematurely.
CYRANO DE BERGERAC A pessimist is a man who tells the truth prematurely.
EDMOND ROSTAND A man who tells lies, like me, merely hides the truth. But a man who tells half-lies has forgotten w...
CLAUDE RAINS When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her
ADRIENNE RICH When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.
ADRIENNE RICH I am also an author. Please check out my novel, A Life Worth Dreaming About.
NICHOLAS DETTMANN A lie may fool someone else, but it tells you the truth: you're weak.
TOM WOLFE One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE If you're writing an opinion piece, it's your job to write your opinion. If, on the other ha...
DAVID MAMET No one believes a liar even when he tells the truth
AESOP The coach wants us not to only do good in sports but academically. He tells us not to throw away our...
BRYCE CARTER Even the crudest, most derivative novel is an expression of the author's hopes and fears and ide...
STEVEN SAYLOR Love is like a novel, But with you its a picture book.
DEVYN WESLEY BARA-NAVARRETTE Country music is the people's music. It just speaks about real life and about truth and it tells...
FAITH HILL This temperature tells us something very fundamental about the properties of dark matter.
GERRY GILMORE A good novel, one which entices the author as much as it beckons the reader.
W.J. RAYMOND Hopefully that just tells us that much more about our team.
ANDREW BRACKMAN All religions, in their pure form, will tell you God is Love. And power, fear, division, judgment, o...
THE TRUTH When you look back with regret, that (regret, loss) becomes your focus.
Then your focus direct...
THE TRUTH The 'all for me and only me' mentality is the most destructive force on earth.
THE TRUTH When you look back with regret, that (regret, loss) becomes your focus.
Then your focus direct...
THE TRUTH We need not fear death, for it is simply the next phase of life. We never die, we simply change form...
THE TRUTH Any perceived 'rejection' is simply a 're-direction'.
THE TRUTH Without awareness, every one of us is at risk of living trapped, an unfulfilled trace of our self, b...
THE TRUTH Liar: One who tells an unpleasant truth.
ANONYMOUS The process of writing a novel is getting to know more about the novel until you know everything abo...
MARTIN AMIS That tells you something about its origin. Does it come from the asteroid belt or does or come from ...
PETER BROWN The contemporary crime novel is, at its best, a novel of character. That's where the suspense co...
VAL MCDERMID She tells us about staying in the moment, avoiding distractions, staying confident. She talks about ...
HEATHER STRONG The Invisible World reveals to us this Truth within its silence.
JACQUELINE RIPSTEIN The suspense of a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist, who is intensely curious abo...
MARY MCCARTHY It's not profound literature, but it's an adventure story and quite a good adventure story, very une...
DAVID THOMSON The media is not at all homogeneous in the way it tells us about war.
BRUCE JACKSON All we know about the new economic world tells us that nations which train engineers will prevail ov...
RICHARD LAMM A writer paradoxically seeks the truth and tells lies every step of the way.
ANNE LAMOTT Writing a novel is easier than writing a memoir; you are not constrained by the truth.
STEVE BISLEY Our advertising tells the truth, and we stand by it.
DAN SCHAFER Language always betrays us, tells the truth when we want to lie, and dissolves into formlessness whe...
JEANETTE WINTERSON The kids are already talking about it. This game tells us we are a legitimate state title threat.
MARK LEROSE A fragmented film such as 'Babel' gives the impression of 'edginess' but, in its for...
GARTH RISK HALLBERG A house, having been willfully purchased and furnished, tells us more than a body, and its descripti...
JOHN UPDIKE They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth.
PLATO Nature tells the truth as it is; it has no euphemism
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA History, at its best, always tells us as much indirectly about ourselves as it does directly about o...
EDMUND MORGAN A novel should be an experience and convey an emotional truth rather than arguments.
JOYCE CARY He's always positive. He's always pumping us up after we come off the field. He tells us stores abou...
MARTEL STRANGE He who is caught in a lie is not believed when he tells the truth.
SPANISH PROVERB If humor and rumor are needed more than faith and truth, then it tells me something about the kind o...
TOBA BETA Science tells us the more intelligent a person is, the less conservative and more liberal they becom...
CHRISTINA ENGELA Those who foretell the future lies, even if he tells the truth.
ARABIC PROVERB He who foretells the future lies, even if he tells the truth.
ARABIAN PROVERB A good novel should be deeply unsettling - its satisfactions should come from its authenticity and i...
DANA SPIOTTA Life can be long or short, it all depends on how you choose to live it. it's like forever, always ch...
SARAH DESSEN There were so many people, so much to navigate, and as the distance fluctuated between us his hand k...
SARAH DESSEN Forever [is] so many different things. It is always changing... it is twenty minutes, or a hundred y...
SARAH DESSEN karma's a bitch, and so am I
RACHEL CAINE The truth is, you have about three paragraphs in a short story, three pages in a novel, to capture t...
NANCY KRESS The twentieth century may tell us that we have nothing to be complacent about in the recent history ...
ROWAN WILLIAMS “The good book tells you to ‘love thy neighbor’, the bad book tells you how to.”
PRABHUDOSS SAMUEL If the truth doesn't save us, what does that say about us?
LOIS MCMASTER BUJOLD If humor and rumor are needed more than faith and truth,
then it tells me something about the ...
TOBA BETA A novel can enlarge the empathy and imagination of both its author and its reader, and my experience...
ANTHONY MARRA My dear fellow, the truth isn’t quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl. ...
OSCAR WILDE Passive righteousness tells us that God does not need our good works. Active righteousness tells us ...
TULLIAN TCHIVIDJIAN Failure and success are a team. Failure tells us what doesn't work, and success tells us what does w...
JIM GENOVESE Cognitive psychology tells us that the unaided human mind is vulnerable to many fallacies and illusi...
STEVEN PINKER I prefer when a person is upfront and tells me the truth than having someone skulk about telling lie...
GARY F EVANS... I'm interested not only in that it's beautiful and that it's Gorham, but also what it tells us about...
ELISABETH AGRO معظم البشر أعينهم مغلقة بغبار الخيبة إلى حدّ يمنعهم من ...
ELIZABETH GILBERT In society, one doesn't tell the truth, one tells the exact opposite.
NELSON EDDY Everybody has a Big Momma: the mother or the grandmother who tells it like it is, keeps it real with...
MARTIN LAWRENCE The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but...
OSWALD CHAMBERS The truth of a myth, your Honor, is not its words but its patterns.
DAVID MITCHELL That's a good win for us. That's a good win for our ball club because it tells us that we're getting...
COLIN STEVENS That's what it's supposed to do--speak truth to power. I'm not surprised by this...hip-hop tells the...
JEFF CHANG The title of the work, its place in the collective library, the nature of the person who tells us ab...
PIERRE BAYARD I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the auth...
EDITH WHARTON Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our fl...
TIMOTHY J. KELLER I am not a person who believes in LOVE. Love creates doubt about its consistency in the long run. Bu...
EPHDAN Usually when I can't see the truth about a thing its because I feel more comfortable with the lie...
DANIEL GILMAN When no one you know tells the truth, you learn to see under the surface.
CASSANDRA CLARE A budget tells us what we can't afford, but it doesn't keep us from buying it.
WILLIAM FEATHER

More Gilbert K. Chesterton

Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Coincidences are spiritual puns.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglar...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON A yawn is a silent shout.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally t...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its v...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have wo...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in orde...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON O God of earth and altar, Bow down and hear our cry; Our earthly rulers falter, Our people drift...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON No man knows he is young while he is young.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Truths turn into dogmas the minute they are disputed.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The present condition of fame is merely fashion.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about som...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been a boy.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON "My country, right or wrong," is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except a desperate ca...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writer...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON White... is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, a...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON A radical generally meant a man who thought he could somehow pull up the root without affecting the ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the mi...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON 'My country, right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a de...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rain...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of read...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness double...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gr...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wron...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over... is saying no good son shoul...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The only way to be sure of catching a train is to miss the one before it.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON A stiff apology is a second insult... The injured party does not want to be compensated because he h...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON A businessman is the only man who is forever apologizing for his occupation.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educat...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believi...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Being 'contented' ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being conte...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our g...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The worst of work nowadays is what happens to people when they cease to work.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer b...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we per...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we lau...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Let a man walk ten miles steadily on a hot summer's day along a dusty English road, and he will ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON You cannot love a thing without wanting to fight for it.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The world will never starve for want of wonders, but for want of wonder.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Courage is almost a contradiction in terms: it means a strong desire to live taking the form of read...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Courage is almost a contradiction in terms: it means a strong desire to live taking the form of re...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Tradition does not mean that the living are dead, but that the dead are living.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a m...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Some men never feel small, but these are the few men who are.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art,...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The mere brute pleasure of reading the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON What affects men sharply about a foreign nation is not so much finding or not finding familiar thing...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one'...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and do...
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...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simp...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be intere...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The word 'good' has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an inj...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbour.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten,...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kid of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruel...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for edu...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The simplification of anything is always sensational.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON And they that rule in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they have no graves ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more ...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. B...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON New roads; new ruts.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the...
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON It is the test of a good religion whether you can make a joke about it.
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump: you may be freeing him from being a camel.
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON The object of opening the mind as of opening the mouth is to close it again on something solid.
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON It is very good for a man to talk about what he does not understand; as long as he understands that ...
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought.
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON Very few people in the world would care to listen to the real defense of their own characters. The r...
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON "My country, right or wrong," is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperat...
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON Journalism consists largely in saying 'Lord Jones died' to people who never knew Lord Jones was aliv...
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for edu...
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON To be in the weakest camp is to be in the strongest school.
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little boot...
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in or...
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON I realized that ritual will always mean throwing away something; Destroying our corn or wine upon t...
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in fairy books, charm...
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was bl...
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled...
G. K. CHESTERTON You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best write...
G K CHESTERTON Virtue is not the absense of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separa...
G. K. CHESTERTON Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the ...
G. K. CHESTERTON Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.
G. K. CHESTERTON Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long a...
G. K. CHESTERTON The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.
G. K. CHESTERTON Half a truth is better than no politics.
G. K. CHESTERTON A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.
G. K. CHESTERTON The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglar...
G. K. CHESTERTON We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified ...
G. K. CHESTERTON Man knows that there are in the soul tints more bewildering, more numberless, and more nameless that...
G. K. CHESTERTON All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.
G. K. CHESTERTON There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it i...
G. K. CHESTERTON I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and do...
G. K. CHESTERTON Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalized.
G. K. CHESTERTON One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.
G. K. CHESTERTON Do not free the camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.
G. K. CHESTERTON I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls...
G. K. CHESTERTON Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
G. K. CHESTERTON People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.
G. K. CHESTERTON Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a re...
G. K. CHESTERTON Courage is getting away from death by continually coming within an inch of it.
G. K. CHESTERTON Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the mi...
G. K. CHESTERTON In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a p...
G. K. CHESTERTON The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untr...
G. K. CHESTERTON Boyhood is a most complex and incomprehensible thing. Even when one has been through it, one does no...
G. K. CHESTERTON If the barricades went up in our streets and the poor became masters, I think the priests would esca...
G. K. CHESTERTON Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world...
G. K. CHESTERTON The artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs. Artists of a large and wholesome vitali...
G. K. CHESTERTON Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.
G. K. CHESTERTON Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.
G. K. CHESTERTON The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In thi...
G. K. CHESTERTON Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about som...
G. K. CHESTERTON Dogma is actually the only thing that cannot be separated from education. It IS education. A teacher...
G. K. CHESTERTON The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for ...
G. K. CHESTERTON The present condition of fame is merely fashion.
G. K. CHESTERTON When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it. The two things that n...
G. K. CHESTERTON Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young.
G. K. CHESTERTON There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes eve...
G. K. CHESTERTON The old idea that the joke was not good enough for the company has been superseded by the new aristo...
G. K. CHESTERTON Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the...
G. K. CHESTERTON To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believi...
G. K. CHESTERTON Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a m...
G. K. CHESTERTON Evil comes at leisure like the disease. Good comes in a hurry like the doctor.
G. K. CHESTERTON Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
G. K. CHESTERTON The timidity of the child or the savage is entirely reasonable; they are alarmed at this world, beca...
G. K. CHESTERTON One may understand the Cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.
G. K. CHESTERTON The world will never starve for want of wonders, but for want of wonder.
G. K. CHESTERTON Our civilization has decided that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important...
G. K. CHESTERTON What we call personality (...) has become the most impersonal thing in the world. Its pale and featu...
G. K. CHESTERTON The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense...
G. K. CHESTERTON Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our g...
G. K. CHESTERTON The worst of work nowadays is what happens to people when they cease to work.
G. K. CHESTERTON A stiff apology is a second insult. The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has...
G. K. CHESTERTON Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit.
G. K. CHESTERTON Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more ...
G. K. CHESTERTON The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.
G. K. CHESTERTON It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.
G. K. CHESTERTON If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.
G. K. CHESTERTON O God of earth and altar,
Bow down and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our peop...
G. K. CHESTERTON We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to ...
G. K. CHESTERTON