1,399 Quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

A thing may be too sad to be believed or too wicked to be believed or too good to be believed; but it cannot be too absurd to be believed in this planet of frogs and elephants, of crocodiles and cuttle-fish.

We do not need to get good laws to restrain bad people. We need to get good people to restrain us from bad laws.

I am more than a devil; I am a man. I can do the one thing which Satan himself cannot do— I can die.

By experts in poverty I do not mean sociologists, but poor men.

...there is in life an element of elfin coincidence which people reckoning on the prosaic may perpetually miss. As it has been well expressed in the paradox of Poe, wisdom should reason on the unforeseen.

An almost unnatural vigilance is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old.

If a man only likes victory he must always come late for the battle.

Christian Science … is the direct denial both of science and of Christianity, for Science rests wholly on the recognition of truth and Christianity on the recognition of pain.

We are to regard existence as a raid or great adventure; it is to be judged, therefore, not by what calamities it encounters, but by what flag it follows and what high town it assaults. The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one's life. But anyone who shrinks from that is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being.