Quotes By Gilbert K. Chesterton

The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything.

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

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.

The word "good" has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.

To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.

Coincidences are spiritual puns.

A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over... is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.

In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it.

A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

New roads; new ruts.

A radical generally meant a man who thought he could somehow pull up the root without affecting the flower. A conservative generally meant a man who wanted to conserve everything except his own reason for conserving anything.

The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense.

We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.

Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.

A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.