549 Quotes by G.K. Chesterton

The State did not own men so entirely, even when it could send them to the stake, as it sometimes does now where it can send them to the elementary school.

The men who made the joke saw something deep which they could not express except by something silly and emphatic.

Humour is meant, in a literal sense, to make game of man; that is, to dethrone him from his official dignity and hunt him like game.

Life exists for the love of music or beautiful things.

Government has become ungovernable; that is, it cannot leave off governing. Law has become lawless; that is, it cannot see where laws should stop. The chief feature of our time is the meekness of the mob and the madness of the government.

Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.

Progress is Providence without God. That is, it is a theory that everything has always perpetually gone right by accident. It is a sort of atheistic optimism, based on an everlasting coincidence far more miraculous than a miracle.

The wise man will follow a star, low and large and fierce in the heavens, but the nearer he comes to it the smaller and smaller it will grow,till he finds it the humble lantern over some little inn or stable. Not till we know the high things shall we know how lowly they are.

The dragon without St. George would not even be grotesque.