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It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.


Gilbert K. Chesterton

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It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we lau...
G. K. CHESTERTON It is a lie.
ARTHUR MILLER Only man has dignity; only man, therefore, can be funny.
RONALD KNOX Not only is it harder to be a man, it is also harder to become one.
ARIANNA HUFFINGTON The idea that nations should love one another, or that business concerns or marketing boards should ...
E. M. FORSTER Integrity is not everything, but it is the only thing that matters.
JEFFREY FRY The mark of a real man, is a man who can allow himself to fall deeply in love with a woman. But the ...
C. JOYBELL C. Bran thought about it. 'Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?'
'That is the only time a man ...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN That man that killed another man is no criminal nor should he be consider an evil man for his action...
ENRIQUE MIGUEL ALCALA SILVA the fall of man will not be a act of god, but a desire of man and the inability for man to reason
SYNECA DE JORMUNGAND The desire for power in excess caused angels to fall; the desire for knowledge in excess caused man ...
FRANCIS BACON SR. Fear is man made and can only be man destroyed..
OLASOT ...in order that a man may be happy, it is necessary that he should not only be capable of his work,...
JOHN RUSKIN The fall of man is written in too legible characters not to be understood: Those that deny it, by th...
GEORGE WHITEFIELD Here is the real domino theory - gay man to gay man, bisexual man to straight woman, addict mother t...
ANNA QUINDLEN Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is...
VIKTOR E. FRANKL Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is...
VIKTOR FRANKL A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.
MALCOLM X Life is weird and wonderful like that, is it not.
SONYA.E.WILLIAMS Intelligence is only relevant when applied, what matters more is that a man can laugh at himself
DANIEL ROBERT O'NEILL One can say of language that it is potentially the only human home, the only dwelling place that can...
JOHN BERGER A man must be prepared not only to be a martyr, but to be a fool. It is absurd to say that a man is ...
G.K. CHESTERTON The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.
AMBROSE BIERCE The hardest tumble a man can take is to fall over his own bluff.
AMBROSE BIERCE A destruction, an annihilation that only man can provoke, only man can prevent.
ELIE WIESEL It is what it is, it is what you make it.
JAMES DURBIN The best fortune that can fall to a man is that which corrects his defects and makes up for his fail...
JOHANN VON GOETHE He said after a little while, 'I see why you say that only men do evil, I think. Even sharks are inn...
URSULA K. LE GUIN The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused m...
FRANCIS BACON A murderer is regarded by the conventional world as something almost monstrous, but a murderer to hi...
GRAHAM GREENE It is not good that the man should be alone.
BIBLE The spirit of man can endure only so much and when it is broken only a miracle can mend it.
JOHN BURROUGHS The cynic says, One man can't do anything. I say, Only one man can do anything.
JOHN W. GARDNER The cynic says, "One man can't do anything." I say, "Only one man can do anything."
JOHN W. GARDNER Which is it? Is man only a blunder of God? Or is God only a blunder of man?
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE What is it: is man only a blunder of God, or God only a blunder of man?
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE I am in love - and, my God, it is the greatest thing that can happen to a man. I tell you, find a wo...
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE I am in love - and, my God, it is the greatest thing that can happen to a man. I tell you, find a wo...
D. H. LAWRENCE The press is not only free, it is powerful. That power is ours. It is the proudest that man can enjo...
BENJAMIN DISRAELI A man should be religious, not superstitious.
JOHN GAY Is civilization only a higher form of idolatry, that man should bow down to a flesh-brush, to flanne...
MARY BAKER EDDY Perhaps man is the only being that can properly be called idle.
SAMUEL JOHNSON Man is the only animal that can be skinned more than once.
JIMMY DURANTE Man is not the owner of mind but only a user. The nature owns mind, man hires only a small portion o...
THIRUMAN ARCHUNAN Nature is precisely what separates man from God … [R]eligion believes that one day this wall of se...
LUDWIG FEUERBACH Man-like it is to fall into sin; fiendlike it is to dwell therein.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW The person who can be only serious or only cheerful, is but half a man.
LEIGH HUNT The only time you fail is when you fall down and stay down.
STEPHEN RICHARDS A man can do only what a man can do. But if he does that each day he can sleep at night and do it ag...
ALBERT SCHWEITZER A man can do only what a man can do. But if he does that each day he can sleep at night and do it a...
ALBERT SCHWEITZER A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; if he does not love solitude, he will not love fre...
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER It is better that a guilty man should not be brought to trial than that he should be acquitted.
LIVY The man held himself still and turned his milk-flooded eyes on her. Fin felt something like vertigo ...
A.S. PETERSON The only time a man can be brave is when he is afraid.
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN Wise man is a wing; stupid man is a hole! You meet a wise man, you rise, you meet a stupid man, and ...
MEHMET MURAT ILDAN It is not time that changes man nor knowledge the only thing that can change someone's mind is love.
PAULO COELHO The only white man you can trust is a dead white man.
ROBERT MUGABE Refuse to fall down. If you cannot refuse to fall down, refuse to stay down, lift your heart toward ...
CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTES It is not in the world of ideas that life is lived. Life is lived for better or worse in life, and t...
ARCHIBALD MACLEISH We need more understanding of human nature, because the only real danger that exists is man himself ...
CARL GUSTAV JUNG I believe that there is a Matrix and... to be more accurate I am in the Pornography Matrix.
DEYTH BANGER Robb says the man died bravely, but Jon says he was afraid."
"What do you think?" his father as...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love...
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love...
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible.
ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY Not only is it harder to be a man, it is also harder to become one.
ARIANNA STASSINOPOULOS The cynic says, 'One man can't do anything.' I say, 'Only one man can do anything.&#...
JOHN W. GARDNER Man is an extraordinarily fixed and limited animal whose nature is absolutely constant. It is only b...
T. E. HULME Only so far as a man believes strongly, mightily, can he act cheerfully, or do anything that is wor...
FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON Only so far as a man believes strongly, mightily, can he act cheerfully, or do anything that is wort...
FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON Only so far as a man believes strongly, mightily, can he act cheerfully, or do anything that is wort...
FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON It is fitting that a liar should be a man of good memory.
QUINTILIAN No man is offended by another man's admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who c...
JANE AUSTEN It is fully unacceptable for the government of Serbia that a man who should be tried for war crimes ...
SRDJAN DJURIC I am Happy and satisfied with what I am. 10000 will take me wrong, 1000 will go against me, 100 will...
NEHA KOTHARI If our mind was an ocean then every now and then we would have the perfect storm happening in it.Gar...
GARY F EVANS... The one girls are gonna fall in love with is Ace. Man, oh, man, girls are going to fall in love with...
PAULA ABDUL A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER The concept that man is not awake, and that only a fully conscious being can "do", have will and not...
COMPTON GAGE But we fall only that we might rise, Alfred. All of us fall; all of us, as you say, screw up. Fallin...
RICK YANCEY Feast of Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, Martyr, c.107 Grace is the incomprehensible fact that God ...
KARL BARTH A man should be what he can do'
MONTGOMERY CLIFT As each situation in life represents a challenge to man and presents a problem for him to solve, the...
VIKTOR E. FRANKL The only man meant to be in your life is a man that knows your worth.
SHANNON L. ALDER He that is down can fall no lower.
SAMUEL BUTLER (1) The only man who can change his mind is a man that's got one.
EDWARD NOYES WESTSCOTT The only man who can change his mind is a man that's got one
EDWARD NOYES WESTCOTT The only thing worse than a man you can't control is a man you can.
JEAN KERR The only thing worse than a man you can't control is a man you can.
MARGO KAUFMAN No one can give anyone else the gift of the idyll; only an animal can do so, because only animals we...
MILAN KUNDERA It's a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can't eat for eight ...
WILLIAM FAULKNER It is not fit that every man should travel; it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.
WILLIAM HAZLITT I regret that I wasn't more successful with my marriages, but it is what it is.
TED TURNER What should our second generation have done, what should it do with the knowledge of the horrors of ...
BERNHARD SCHLINK A righteous man does not conceive of himself as righteous; he is "only doing what anyone else would ...
MARTIN BERMAN-GORVINE When you put someone who weighs 700 pounds on that narrow gurney, it can be awkward. Not only does t...
ROY CARROLL It is what it is, and it ain't nothin' else... Everything is clearly, openly, plainly delive...
DAN FLAVIN We are told to remember the idea and not the man. Because a man can fail. He can be caught, he can b...
ALAN MOORE Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft, and the only one that can be mass produced ...
WERNER VON BRAUN I'm not an Emontional, but how???
I live with the thought that "Nothing can be returned, it has...
DEYTH BANGER

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