1,399 Quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kid of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty.

Nobody notices postmen, yet they have passions like other men.

There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally.

The whole order of things is as outrageous as any miracle which could presume to violate it.

It is often a mistake to combine two pleasures, because pleasures, like pains, can act as counter-irri-tants to each other.

In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was logic.

'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.'

Modern nature-worship is all upside down. Trees and fields ought to be the ordinary things; terraces and temples ought to be extraordinary. I am on the side of the man who lives in the country and wants to go to London.

I came to the conclusion that the optimist thought everything good except the pessimist, and that the pessimist thought everything bad, except himself.