No man demands what he desires; each man demands what he fancies he can get. Soon people forget what the man really wanted first; and after a successful and vigorous political life, he forgets it himself. The whole is an extravagant riot of second bests, a pandemonium of pis-aller.


G.K. Chesterton

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

In the long run a man becomes what he purposes, and gains for himself what he really desires
HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE
A wise man writes down what he thinks, a stupid man forgets what he thinks, a complete idiot punishe...
JASON ZEBEHAZY
Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you...
C. JOYBELL C.
What is a man advantaged if he gain the whole world and lose himself
SUNDAY ADELAJA
When two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, eac...
MICHAEL DE SAINTAMO
What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means that first of all, man exists...
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE
And Charlie, don't forget about what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he ever wanted....
ROALD DAHL
A man of honour should never forget what he is because he sees what others are.
BALTASAR GRACIAN
Man always gets less than he demands from life.
JACK LONDON
A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with - a man is what he makes of himse...
ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL
A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with - a man is what he makes of himse...
ALEXANDER BELL
A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with -- a man is what he makes of hims...
ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL
A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with - a man is what he makes of himse...
ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL
Whenever two people meet there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, ...
WILLIAM JAMES
Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself,...
WILLIAM JAMES
The true portrait of a man is a fusion of what he thinks he is, what others think he is, what he rea...
DORE SCHARY
A man really determines himself by what he does.
VIN SCULLY
Man becomes greater in proportion to knowing himself and his faculties. Let him become conscious of ...
FELIX E. SCHELLING
Man is insatiable for power; he is infantile in his desires and, always discontented with what he ha...
JOSEPH DE MAISTRE
One man alone can not change things, if this is what he tells himself, but a man who tells himself h...
RYAN THACKER
When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn't a man of action.
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU
Fortunate, indeed, is the man who takes exactly the right measure of himself and holds a just balan...
PETER LATHAM
No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.
THOMAS MANN
Man's sin is in his failure to live what he is. Being the master of the earth, man forgets that ...
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL
The measure of a man is what he does with power.
PLATO
And Charlie, don't forget about what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he ever wanted....
ROALD DAHL
Remind a man of what he remembers, and you will make him forget it.
UNKNOWN
The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Clinton lied. A man might forget where he parks or where he lives, but he never forgets oral sex, no...
BARBARA BUSH
Mr. Wonka: "Don’t forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he wanted."
Cha...
ROALD DAHL
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 desires praise that he may be reassured, that he may be quit of his doubting of himself; he is...
ALEC WAUGH
No man can be a politician, except he be first a historian or a traveller; for except he can see wha...
JAMES HARRINGTON
What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means first of all, man exists, tur...
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE
For in prosperity a man is often puffed up with pride, whereas tribulations chasten and humble him t...
ALFRED THE GREAT
There are three signs of senility. The first sign is that a man forgets his theorems. The second sig...
PAUL ERDOS
Painting is a blind man's profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tel...
PABLO PICASSO
It is the lies he's telling her - as he has been, Nassun understands suddenly, her whole life - that...
N.K. JEMISIN
Never spoil a man of words. 'Cause what he says, he does. And when he does, he really means it.
ALEXANDER A. MANANTAN
An orator is a man who says what he thinks and feels what he says.
WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN
Man... knows only when he is satisfied and when he suffers, and only his sufferings and his satisfac...
JOHANN VON GOETHE
Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE
A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of hi...
LEO TOLSTOY
A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of hi...
LEO TOLSTOY
Man is what he wills himself to be.
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE
If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. Ho...
BLAISE PASCAL
It is not what he had, or even what he does which expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.
HENRI FREDERIC AMIEL
It is not what he had, or even what he does, which expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.
HENRI FREDERIC AMIEL
It is of no consequence of what parents a man is born, so he be man of merit
HORACE
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
Clinton lied. A man might forget where he parks or where he lives, but he never forgets oral sex, no...
BARBARA BUSH
A man is the sum of his actions, of what he has done, of what he can do, Nothing else.
MAHATMA GANDHI
A man is the sum of his actions, of what he has done, of what he can do, Nothing else.
JOHN GALSWORTHY
No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger. It is the heart that makes a ma...
HENRY WARD BEECHER
When a man puts on a Character he is a stranger to, there's as much difference between what he appe...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
For what is a man, what has he got? If not himself, then he has naught. To say the things he truly f...
PAUL ANKA
A man does what he can; a woman does what a man cannot.
ISABEL ALLENDE
A man can only do what he can do. But if he does that each day he can sleep at night and do it again...
ALBERT SCHWEITZER
It is not what he has, nor even what he does, which directly expresses the worth of a man, but what ...
HENRI-FRéDéRIC AMIEL
It is a part of the poet's work to show each man what he sees but does not know he sees
DAME EDITH SITWELL
Never forget what a man says to you when he is angry.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
As each situation in life represents a challenge to man and presents a problem for him to solve, the...
VIKTOR E. FRANKL
A happy man is one who wants what he has. An unhappy man gets what he wants but never stops wanting.
VIKRANT PARSAI
What is a sophisticate? He is a man who thinks he can swim better than he can and sometimes he drown...
OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN II
The value of a man resides in what he gives and not in what he is capable of receiving.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he i...
C.S. LEWIS
When a man forgets himself, he usually does something everybody else remembers.
JAMES COCO
A man who lives, not by what he loves but what he hates, is a sick man.
ARCHIBALD MACLEISH
A man who lives, not by what he loves but what he hates, is a sick man.
ARCHIBALD MACLEISH
What a man has made himself he will be; his state is the result of his past life, and his heaven or ...
CATHERINE CROWE
A man can never hope to be more than he is if he is not first honest about what he isn’t.
DON WILLIAMS, JR
A man can never hope to be more than he is if he is not first honest about what he isn’t.
DON WILLIAMS JR
A man can do what he ought to do; and when he says he cannot, it is because he will not.
FEOUDE
A man can do what he ought to do; and when he says he cannot, it is because he will not.
FEOUDE
The indiscriminate denunciation of the rich is mischievous.... No poor man was ever made richer or h...
BENJAMIN HARRISON
When a man really tells the truth, the first truth he tells is that he himself is a liar.
G.K. CHESTERTON
Commemoration of Albrecht Dürer, artist, 1528, and Michelangelo Buonarrotti, artist, spiritual ...
JOHN W. DIXON
The soil of a man’s heart is stonier; a man grows what he can and tends it.
STEPHEN KING
No man can lose what he never had.
IZAAK WALTON
No man can lose what he never had
IZAAK WALTON
No man can give what he has not
LEGAL MAXIM
In the beautiful, man sets himself up as the standard of perfection; in select cases he worships him...
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
It is of no consequence of what parents a man is born, as long as he be a man of merit.
HORACE
The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.
ALBERT SCHWEITZER
The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Man does what he can, God does what he will.
PROVERB
Treat a man as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he could be, and he will become wh...
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face...
BIBLE
He demanded a lot from all of us, but I think he put more pressure and demands on himself. That's wh...
JAMAL MAYERS
A man can never hope to be more than he is if he is not first honest about what he isn’t.
DON WILLIAMS, JR
A man must get a thing before he can forget it.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.
A man must get a thing before he can forget it
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Man, like other organisms, is so perfectly coordinated that he may easily forget, whether awake or a...
ALBERT CLAUDE
The measure of a man is what he does when he has power.
PIERCE BROWN
No man is obliged to do as much as he can do. A man is to have part of his life to himself.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The great man is the man who can get himself made and who will get himself made out of anything he ...
GERALD STANLEY LEE
We distinguish the excellent man from the common man by saying that the former is the one who makes ...
JOS

More G.K. Chesterton

Divinity is great enough to be divine; it is great enough to call itself divine. But as humanity gro...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Are you a devil?"
"I am a man," answered Father Brown gravely; "and therefore have all devils i...
G.K. CHESTERTON
For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.
G.K. CHESTERTON
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untr...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic.
G.K. CHESTERTON
Who would condescend to strike down the mere things that he does not
fear? Who would debase him...
G.K. CHESTERTON
If we are bound to improve, we need not trouble to improve. The pure doctrine of progress is the bes...
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 Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally t...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
G.K. CHESTERTON
The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.
G.K. CHESTERTON
We men and women are all in the same boat, upon a stormy sea. We owe to each other a terrible and tr...
G.K. CHESTERTON
If you happen to read fairy tales, you will observe that one idea runs from one end of them to the o...
G.K. CHESTERTON
There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wron...
G.K. CHESTERTON
I am not absentminded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.
G.K. CHESTERTON
A tragey means always a man's struggle with that which is stronger than man.
G.K. CHESTERTON
Realism is simply Romanticism that has lost its reason...that is its reason for existing.
G.K. CHESTERTON
The word "good" has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of...
G.K. CHESTERTON
There's a lot of difference between listening and hearing.
G.K. CHESTERTON
Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.
G.K. CHESTERTON
Now the best relation to our spiritual home is to be near enough to love it. But the next best is to...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Science must not impose any philosophy, any more than the telephone must tell us what to say.
G.K. CHESTERTON
There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to de...
G.K. CHESTERTON
We do not need to get good laws to restrain bad people. We need to get good people to restrain us fr...
G.K. CHESTERTON
We have all read in scientific books, and, indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has for...
G.K. CHESTERTON
A pickpocket is obviously a champion of private enterprise. But it would perhaps be an exaggeration ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.
G.K. CHESTERTON
Nine times out of ten a man’s broad-mindedness is necessarily the narrowest thing about him. This ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
We have never even begun to understand a people until we have found something that we do not underst...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Through all this ordeal his root horror had been isolation, and there are no words to express the ab...
G.K. CHESTERTON
There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to...
G.K. CHESTERTON
White is not a mere absence of color; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as de...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is b...
G.K. CHESTERTON
They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians....
G.K. CHESTERTON
Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances that we know to be desperate.
G.K. CHESTERTON
The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry, and al...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Just at present you only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the...
G.K. CHESTERTON
If it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly. (on not perfectionism to put things off) .
G.K CHESTERTON
An adventure is only an inconvenience, rightly considered.
G.K CHESTERTON
Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.
G.K CHESTERTON
I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.
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
How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.
G.K CHESTERTON
To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labours, and holidays; to be...
G.K. CHESTERTON
In prosperity, our friends know us. In adversity, we know our friends
G.K. CHESTERTON
Happiness is a state of the soul; a state in which our natures are full of the wine of an ancient yo...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable. Never drink when you are wretched ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.
G.K. CHESTERTON
I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is r...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Therefore I see no wrong in riding with the Nightmare to-night; she whinnies to me from the rocking ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinar...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Another savage trait of our time is the disposition to talk about material substances instead of abo...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relat...
G.K. CHESTERTON
According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in m...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.
G.K. CHESTERTON
A Second Childhood.”

When all my days are ending
And I have no song to sing,
...
G.K. CHESTERTON
If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despot...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.
G.K. CHESTERTON
It [feminism] is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers bu...
G.K. CHESTERTON
I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
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
Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.
G.K. CHESTERTON
To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believi...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Modern art has to be what is called ‘intense.’ it is not easy to define being intense; but, roug...
G.K. CHESTERTON
It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.
G.K. CHESTERTON
Through all this ordeal his root horror had been isolation, and there are no words to express the ab...
G.K. CHESTERTON
But when first the two black dragons sprang out of the fog upon the small clerk, they had merely th...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Monotony has nothing to do with a place; monotony, either in its sensation or its infliction, is sim...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.
G.K. CHESTERTON
The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.
G.K. CHESTERTON
A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.
G.K. CHESTERTON
There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
G.K. CHESTERTON
When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
If there were no God, there would be no atheists.
G.K. CHESTERTON
I have little doubt that when St. George had killed the dragon he was heartily afraid of the princes...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The woman does not work because the man tells her to work and she obeys. On the contrary, the woman ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity c...
G.K. CHESTERTON
In the struggle for existence, it is only on those who hang on for ten minutes after all is hopeless...
G.K. CHESTERTON
I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. Th...
G.K. CHESTERTON
That is the one eternal education: to be sure enough that something is true that you dare to tell it...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The man who kills a man kills a man.
The man who kills himself kills all men.
As far as he...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The things we see every day are the things we never see at all.
G.K. CHESTERTON
When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become c...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister.
G.K. CHESTERTON
We should always endeavor to wonder at the permanent thing, not at the mere exception. We should be ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.
G.K. CHESTERTON
But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore h...
G.K. CHESTERTON
We fear men so much, because we fear God so little. One fear cures another. When man's terror scares...
G.K. CHESTERTON
There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there.
G.K. CHESTERTON
Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.
G.K. CHESTERTON
It may well be on such a night of clouds and cruel colors that there is brought forth upon the earth...
G.K. CHESTERTON
It was his home now. But it could not be his home till he had gone from it and returned to it. Now h...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The Catholic Church is like a thick steak, a glass of red wine, and a good cigar.
G.K. CHESTERTON
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
Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is mor...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The modern mind is forced towards the future by a certain sense of fatigue, not unmixed with terror,...
G.K. CHESTERTON
People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read mor...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Among the rich you will never find a really generous man even by accident. They may give their money...
G.K. CHESTERTON
All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The difference between the poet and the mathematician is that the poet tries to get his head into th...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Coincidences are spiritual puns.
G.K. CHESTERTON
This man's spiritual power has been precisely this, that he has distinguished between custom and cre...
G.K. CHESTERTON
There again," said Syme irritably, "what is there poetical about being in revolt? You might as well ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The most poetical thing in the world is not being sick.
G.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...
G.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...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
G.K. CHESTERTON
I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness double...
G.K. CHESTERTON
...but this is the real objection to that torrent of modern talk about treating crime as disease, ab...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Think of all those ages through which men have had the courage to die, and then remember that we hav...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Thrift is poetic because it is creative; waste is unpoetic because it is waste.
G.K. CHESTERTON
The future is a blank wall on which every man can write his own name as large as he likes; the past ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The more truly we can see life as a fairytale, the more clearly the tale resolves itself into war wi...
G.K. CHESTERTON
It is quite easy to see why a legend is treated, and ought to be treated, more respectfully than a b...
G.K. CHESTERTON
I always like a dog so long as he isn't spelled backward.
G.K. CHESTERTON
She(Joan of Arc) put her dreams and her sentiment into her aims, where they ought to be; she put her...
G.K. CHESTERTON
In the glad old days, before the rise of modern morbidities...it used to be thought a disadvantage t...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Modern tragic writers have to write short stories; if they wrote long stories…cheerfulness would c...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.
G.K. CHESTERTON
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
G.K. CHESTERTON
... just as when we see a pig in a litter larger than the other pigs, we know that by an unalterable...
G.K. CHESTERTON
And it did certainly appear that the prophets had put the people (engaged in the old game of Cheat t...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Then the small man suddenly ran after them and said:
"I want to get my haircut. I say, do you k...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Adam Wayne, the conqueror, with his face flung back and his mane like a lion's, stood with his great...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Cooking is an art; it has in it personality, and even perversity, for the definition of an art is th...
G.K. CHESTERTON
I can only put it sufficiently curtly in a careless simile. A Socialist means a man who thinks a wal...
G.K. CHESTERTON
In the lower classes the school master does not work for the parent, but against the parent. Modern ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The only persons who seem to have nothing to do with the education of the children are the parents.
G.K. CHESTERTON
We have actually contrived to invent a new kind of hypocrite. The old hypocrite, Tartuffe or Pecksni...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Now I have no notion at all of propounding a new ideal. There is no new ideal imaginable by the madn...
G.K. CHESTERTON
If you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will have no answer ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
There are, I believe, some who still deny that England is governed by an oligarchy. It is quite enou...
G.K. CHESTERTON
But of all the instances of error arising from this physical fancy, the worst is that we have before...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Thrift is the really romantic thing; economy is more romantic than extravagance... But the thing is ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
A head can be beaten small enough until it fits the hat.
G.K. CHESTERTON
No one has even begun to understand comradeship who does not accept with it a certain hearty eagerne...
G.K. CHESTERTON
No one has even begun to understand comradeship who does not accept with it a certain hearty eagerne...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Men have not got tired of Christianity; they have never found enough Christianity to get tired of. M...
G.K. CHESTERTON
It is very currently suggested that the modern man is the heir of all the ages, that he has got the ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Thrift is poetic because it is creative.
G.K. CHESTERTON
The chicken does not exist only in order to produce another egg. He may also exist to amuse himself,...
G.K. CHESTERTON
There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any more than in off...
G.K. CHESTERTON
When a man really tells the truth, the first truth he tells is that he himself is a liar.
G.K. CHESTERTON
In all legends men have thought of women as sublime separately but horrible in a herd.
G.K. CHESTERTON
All true friendliness begins with fire and food and drink and the recognition of rain or frost. ...E...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly, wo...
G.K. CHESTERTON
An historic institution, which never went right, is really quite much of a miracle as an institution...
G.K. CHESTERTON
As for the general view that the Church was discredited by the War—they might as well say that the...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The paradise of my fancy is one where pigs have wings
G.K. CHESTERTON
..."vers libre," (free verse) or nine-tenths of it, is not a new metre any more than sleeping in a d...
G.K. CHESTERTON
I do not deny, but strongly affirm, the right of the State to interfere to cure a great evil. I say ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once.
G.K. CHESTERTON
If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
It is quite certain that the skirt means female dignity, not female submission; it can be proved by ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The center of every man's existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accide...
G.K. CHESTERTON
I had tried to be happy by telling myself that man is an animal, like any other which sought its mea...
G.K. CHESTERTON
[Fairy tales] make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run...
G.K. CHESTERTON
That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already, but that God could ha...
G.K. CHESTERTON
If Innocent is happy, it is because he is innocent. If he can defy the conventions, it is just becau...
G.K. CHESTERTON
There is something sinister about putting a leprechaun in a workhouse. The only solid comfort is tha...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Man may behold what ugliness he likes if he is sure that he will not worship it; but there are some ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
If we are calm," replied the policeman, "it is the calm of organized resistance."
"Eh?" said Sy...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Do not be proud of the fact that your grandmother was shocked at something which your are accustomed...
G.K. CHESTERTON
As long as the vision of heaven is always changing, the vision of earth will be exactly the same. No...
G.K. CHESTERTON
I mean that we here are on the wrong side of the tapestry,' answered Father Brown. 'The things that ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.
G.K. CHESTERTON
The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens...
G.K. CHESTERTON
No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for edu...
G.K. CHESTERTON
A man's minor actions and arrangements ought to be free, flexible, creative; the things that should ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
A detective story generally describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. A mode...
G.K. CHESTERTON
These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own.
G.K. CHESTERTON
There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.
G.K. CHESTERTON
Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, b...
G.K. CHESTERTON
There is a limit to human charity," said Lady Outram, trembling all over.

"There is," sai...
G.K. CHESTERTON
He wondered why the pelican was the symbol of charity, except it was that it wanted a good deal of c...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Charity is the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible. Hope is the power of being ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
We do not admire, we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this world for love of the other. But wha...
G.K. CHESTERTON
Dear Sir: Regarding your article 'What's Wrong with the World?' I am. Yours truly,
G.K. CHESTERTON
There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.
G.K. CHESTERTON
We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practica...
G.K. CHESTERTON
He may be mad, but there's method in his madness. There nearly always is method in madness. It's wha...
G.K. CHESTERTON
If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
G.K. CHESTERTON
The first two facts which a healthy boy or girl feels about sex are these: first that it is beautifu...
G.K. CHESTERTON
I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.
G.K. CHESTERTON
My country, right or wrong,” is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperat...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.
G.K. CHESTERTON
Can you not see, […] that fairy tales in their essence are quite solid and straightforward; but th...
G.K. CHESTERTON
the things common to all men are more important than the things peculiar to any men. Ordinary things...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The pessimists believe that the cosmos is a clock that is running down; the progressives believe it ...
G.K. CHESTERTON