GCG.K. Chesterton

466 collected words

G.K. Chesterton

Dates not recorded

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Quotations and sayings

01Undated

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

G.K. Chesterton / quote

02Undated

He has come to the most dreadful conclusion a literary man can come to, the conclusion that the ordinary view is the right one. It is only the last and wildest kind of courage that can stand on a tower before ten thousand people and tell them that twice two is four.

G.K. Chesterton / quote

03Undated

The joke is generally in the oddest way the truth and yet not the fact.

G.K. Chesterton / quote

04Undated

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

G.K. Chesterton / quote

05Undated

We fear men so much, because we fear God so little. One fear cures another. When man's terror scares you, turn your thoughts to the wrath of God.

G.K. Chesterton / quote

06Undated

For when we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything.

G.K. Chesterton / quote

07Undated

If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God.

G.K. Chesterton / quote

08Undated

The place that the shepherds found was not an academy or an abstract republic, it was not a place of myths allegorised or dissected or explained or explained away. It was a place of dreams come true.

G.K. Chesterton / quote

09Undated

There is only one thing which is generally safe from plagiarism -- self-denial.

G.K. Chesterton / quote

10Undated

I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a story-teller

G.K. Chesterton / quote

11Undated

There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.

G.K. Chesterton / quote

12Undated

Happiness is not only a hope, but also in some strange manner a memory ... we are all kings in exile.

G.K. Chesterton / quote

13Undated

Unhappy! of course you'll be unhappy. Who the devil are you that you shouldn't be unhappy, like the mother that bore you?

G.K. Chesterton / quote

14Undated

Romance is the deepest thing in life. It is deeper than reality.

G.K. Chesterton / quote

15Undated

Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.

G.K. Chesterton / quote

16Undated

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

G.K. Chesterton / quote

17Undated

It is currently said that hope goes with youth, and lends to youth its wings of a butterfly; but I fancy that hope is the last gift given to man, and the only gift not given to youth. Youth is pre-eminently the period in which a man can be lyric, fanatical, poetic; but youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged; God has kept that good wine until not. It is from the backs of the elderly gentlemen that the wings of the butterfly should burst.

G.K. Chesterton / quote

18Undated

The man who kills a man kills a man.The man who kills himself kills all men.As far as he is concerned, he wipes out the world.

G.K. Chesterton / quote

19Undated

This very pride in keeping his word was that he was keeping it to miscreants. It was his last triumph over these lunatics to go down into their dark room and die for something that they could not even understand. The barrel-organ seemed to give the marching tune with the energy and the mingled noises of a whole orchestra; and he could hear deep and rolling, under all the trumpets of the pride of life, the drums of the pride of death.

G.K. Chesterton / quote

20Undated

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

G.K. Chesterton / quote

21Undated

The difference between the poet and the mathematician is that the poet tries to get his head into the heavens while the mathematician tries to get the heavens into his head.

G.K. Chesterton / quote

22Undated

..."vers libre," (free verse) or nine-tenths of it, is not a new metre any more than sleeping in a ditch is a new school of architecture.

G.K. Chesterton / quote

23Undated

Even the moon is only poetical because there is a man in the moon.

G.K. Chesterton / quote

24Undated

An artist is identical with an anarchist,' he cried. 'You might transpose the words anywhere. An anarchist is an artist. The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything. He sees how much more valuable is one burst of blazing light, one peal of perfect thunder, than the mere common bodies of a few shapeless policemen. An artist disregards all governments, abolishes all conventions. The poet delights in disorder only. If it were not so, the most poetical thing in the world would be the Underground Railway.''So it is,' said Mr. Syme.'Nonsense!' said Gregory, who was very rational when any one else attempted paradox.

G.K. Chesterton / quote