1,399 Quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

I would never commit the positively anti-social action of robbing a bank, or worse still, working in one.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

The modern world has far too little understanding of the art of keeping young. Its notion of progress has been to pile one thing on top of another, without caring if each thing was crushed in turn. People forgot that the human soul can enjoy a thing most when there is time to think about it and be thankful for it. And by crowding things together they lost the sense of surprise; and surprise is the secret of joy.

Eugenics asserts that all men must be so stupid that they cannot manage their own affairs; and also so clever that they can manage each other's.

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

We are Christians and Catholics not because we worship a key, but because we have passed a door; and felt the wind that is the trumpet of liberty blow over the land of the living.

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

I am concerned with a certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been meekly ratified by the mere facts.

All men are ordinary men; the extraordinary men are those who know it.