549 Quotes by G.K. Chesterton

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.

But there is in everything a reasonable division of labour. I have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it.

..."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.

Modern art has to be what is called ‘intense.’ it is not easy to define being intense; but, roughly speaking, it means saying only one thing at a time, and saying it wrong.

An artist will betray himself by some sort of sincerity.

The historian has a habit of saying of people in the past: 'I think they may well be considered worthy of praise, allowing for the ideas of their times.' There will never be really good history until the historian says, ‘I think they were worthy of praise, allowing for the ideas of my time.

There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and a tired man who wants a book to read.

We are in this fairyland on sufferance; it is not for us to quarrel with the conditions under which we enjoy this wild vision of the world.

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