Quotes by Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.
Talk about the pews and steeples and the cash that goes therewith! But the souls of Christian people... chuck it, Smith!
Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.
Being "contented" ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and resigned to living in it; it ought to mean appreciating all there is in such a position.
Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.
It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.
An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.
The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.
And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.
Coincidences are spiritual puns.
Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.
There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.
I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.
People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.
'My country, right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'
To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.
Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.
Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.
White... is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black... God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.
To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.
Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.
