The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.


Gilbert 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

The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real ...
G. K. CHESTERTON
You are back, Cam. Which means for the first time since you left, it's okay for us to be mad at you ...
ALLY CARTER
I always liked the story of Noah's Ark and the idea of starting anew by rescuing the things you like...
ZACH BRAFF
I always liked the story of Noah's Ark and the idea of starting anew by rescuing the things you ...
ZACH BRAFF
Leaving things behind makes you feel better but carrying the things that were left behind make you s...
SEGEV LAYANI
Real leadership means tackling tough problems ourselves and not leaving them to our children.
JON KYL
leaving the past behind us and building a new future together.
JOHN HUME
Real development is not leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them, as on a roo...
G. K. CHESTERTON
There is a sense of danger in leaving what you know, even if what you know isn’t much. These mill ...
JOHN WILLIAM TUOHY
Leaving a perfectly good trail to take a short cut was one of the things that made no sense to us.
CARL BAUER
Progress just means bad things happen faster.
TERRY PRATCHETT
Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Immortality is to live your life doing good things, and leaving your mark behind.
BRANDON LEE
Life is about moving forward, and leaving behind people & things that can't keep up.
BJ MORIN
Acceptance means no complaining, and happiness means no complaining about the things over which you ...
WAYNE W. DYER
The primary obligation of any prisoner is to escape. Whether that means actually leaving or simply f...
EMMANUEL GOLDSTEIN
Pakistan not only means freedom and independence but the Muslim Ideology which has to be preserved, ...
MUHAMMAD ALI JINNAH
There are souls in this world which have the gift of finding joy everywhere and of leaving it behind...
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
There are souls in this world which have the gift of finding joy everywhere and of leaving it behind...
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER
Who can't relate to the idea of leaving one chapter behind and moving on to the next?
MIKE SHINODA
Divers have found there is no air left in the holds of the ship. That means sea water has filled the...
CAN KARACA
... each of us describes our existence by means of objects which are indifferent to us, which surviv...
ANDREW MOTION
The idea of the state is, or should be, a very limited, prescribed idea. The state looks after the d...
TOM STOPPARD
How things look on the outside of us depends on how things are on the inside of us.
PARKS COUSINS
How things look on the outside of us depends on how things are on the inside of us.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
How things look on the outside of us depends on how things are on the inside of us.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR
The Divine Wisdom has given us prayer, not as a means whereby to obtain the good things of earth, bu...
FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON
The purpose of each of us is to die leaving our future.
SORIN CERIN
The lake level has equalised with interior water inside the city, which means it won't flow inside t...
DAN RILEY
The lake level has equalized with interior water inside the city, which means it won't flow inside t...
DAN RILEY
The lake level has equalized with interior water inside the city, which means it won't flow inside t...
DAN RILEY
Romance takes place in the middle distance. Romance is looking in at yourself through a window cloud...
MARGARET ATWOOD
Life has a way of setting things in order and leaving them be. Very tidy, is life.
JEAN ANOUILH
Society has provided [children] no rituals by which they become members of the tribe, of the communi...
JOSEPH CAMPBELL
There are really two types of laughter on the part of the spectator. There is the laughter of recogn...
MICHAEL HANEKE
Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
Some worshippers were leaving and others were praying inside when the explosion blasted glass all ov...
AHMED HASSAN
Perhaps this war will pass like the others which divided us leaving us dead, killing us along with t...
PABLO NERUDA
The idea behind this whole thing was for it to be a cultural and business exchange. Golf was just th...
BUDDY GUILLORY
A good government implies two things: fidelity to the object of government, which is the happiness o...
JAMES MADISON
Both of us understand that real reform means more than tightening bureaucratic rules; it means funda...
JOHN SHADEGG
The main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not merely as a means to other ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The whole idea of a dream, to me, is a mystery plane. Things are operating there that tell us the re...
WINNIE HOLZMAN
No individual has any right to come into the world and go out of it without leaving behind
GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER
Of course you are American,' he said, and waived his hand, like waving away the sentiment. 'What oth...
TONY D'SOUZA
Magicians are manipulating your consciousness. They are showing you something impossible. They're ge...
RICHARD WISEMAN
while we've all heard of Einstein's big idea, very few of us know what it means.
JOHN LITHGOW
I think of childhood as an explosion of creativity. For most people, growing up and earning a living...
STEVEN MILLHAUSER
The truth has not so much set us free as it has ripped away a carefully constructed facade, leaving ...
LISA UNGER
Anyone who ever makes you the slightest bit uncomfortable, Breanna, you tell one of us. You're with ...
KATIE MCGARRY
Leaving America means renouncing your citizenship, moving out of the country and leaving family and ...
MICHAEL ARRINGTON
I think part of being an adult is leaving the fairytale behind.
RASHIDA JONES
Why do we desire, above all other things, that which has the greatest power to destroy us?
MARGARET ROGERSON
I prefer leaving things to the market as much as possible.
DOROTHY DENNING
It is by no means certain that our individual personality is the single inhabitant of these our corp...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The w...
LIN YUTANG
Peace for us means the destruction of Israel. We are preparing for an all-out war, a war which will ...
YASSER ARAFAT
The main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not merely as means to other th...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is a nobler art of leaving things undone. The wi...
LIN YUTANG
Besides the noble art of getting things done there is a nobler art of leaving things undone…. The ...
LIN YUTANG
The understanding of your position in Christ is the key to having power over finances, which for us ...
SUNDAY ADELAJA
Forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead
BIBLE
A good government implies two things; first, fidelity to the objects of the government; secondly, a ...
JOSEPH STORY
In order for us as poor and oppressed people to become part of a society that is meaningful, the sys...
ELLA BAKER
Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The w...
LIN YUTANG
Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The w...
LYN YUTANG
We all knew he was (staying). Obviously I know that he was offered that deal, but he thought about a...
KARON BRADLEY
Love is the true means by which the world is enjoyed: our love to others, and others love to us.
THOMAS TRAHERNE
We got a tie which means... we're still the top team in the zone, so that for us is good.
MAUREEN HALL
I can't see us leaving Stamford Bridge in the near future.
EIDUR GUDJOHNSEN
For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal...
BIBLE
Rhetoric can be easily recognized for it is delightfully sweet sounding but it is utterly void of sa...
CRAIG D. LOUNSBROUGH
The purpose of education is to enable us to develop to the fullest that which is inside us
NORMAN COUSINS
The main peculiarity which distinguishes man from other animals is the means of his support-the powe...
THOMAS MALTHUS
So hologram means--" I finally said.
"It means non-corporeal, yeah. Which sucks seeing as how t...
RACHEL HAWKINS
A simple and heart-warming fable, one might think - in which case, one would reveal oneself to be an...
J.K. ROWLING
My refusal to remove the book from the library was backed by a majority of the Board of Governors. I...
J.K. ROWLING
Our object in these remarks has been not only to account for the slow progress which has as yet been...
NASSAU WILLIAM SENIOR
China's per capita GDP has topped 1,000 US dollars, which means a growing number of Chinese citizens...
FENG FEI
China's per capita GDP has topped 1,000 US dollars, which means a growing number of Chinese citizens...
FENG FEI
Mathematics is a place where you can do things which you can't do in the real world.
MARCUS DU SAUTOY
As a blind man has no idea of colors, so have we no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God per...
ISAAC NEWTON
Technology challenges us to assert our human values, which means that first of all, we have to figur...
SHERRY TURKLE
For the victor peace means the preservation of the position of power which he has secured. For the v...
GUSTAV STRESEMANN
Gilbert kept us in the game and gave us a chance to win which is what you want at that point. He did...
DENNIS MARTEL
Things have changed, ... We aren't in the underlying OS business anymore, which has freed us to part...
ED COLLIGAN
Enmity means 'hatred toward, hostility to, or a state of opposition.' It is the power by whi...
EZRA TAFT BENSON
Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, allowing us to do things more quickly and efficient...
JAMES SUROWIECKI
To keep up even a worthwhile tradition means vitiating the idea behind it which must necessarily be ...
ALFRED JARRY
To keep up even a worthwhile tradition means vitiating the idea behind it which must necessarily be ...
ALFRED JARRY
Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the...
CORNELIA FUNKE
For it was not so much that by means of words I came to a complete understanding of things, as that ...
PLUTARCH
Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The w...
LIN YUTANG
We feel assured the mission and the original vision can continue without us. We are leaving when thi...
BARBARA FERRARO
I get it now, our body is made up of cells and cells are meant to keep something from leaving. Which...
ANDONI GARCIA
A certain kind of courage is required to follow what truly calls to us; why else would so many choos...
MICHAEL MEADE
From love arises hatred of those things which are contrary to what we love, or which oppose and thwa...
JONATHAN EDWARDS
Current public diplomacy and foreign policy making reduces the role of American citizens to mere spe...
NANCY SNOW
It means I'm going to be moving out of Ontario. It means I'll be leaving my three grandchildren, my ...
ANNE MATTEWS
With the usage of etc, Britishers had a nice, convenient and easy way of leaving meanings, sentences...
APURVA GAGLANI

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
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