1,399 Quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

Unless a man becomes the enemy of an evil, he will not even become its slave but rather its champion.

Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox; that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home.

Over-civilization and barbarism are within an inch of each other. And a mark of both is the power of medicine-men.

To mix science up with philosophy is only to produce a philosophy that has lost all its ideal value and a science that has lost all its practical value. It is for my private physician to tell me whether this or that food will kill me. It is for my private philosopher to tell me whether I ought to be killed.

Altruists, with thin, weak voices, denounce Christ as an egoist. Egoists (with even thinner and weaker voices) denounce Him as an altruist.

The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind.

The good Bishop of Assisi expressed a sort of horror at the hard life which the Little Brothers lived at the Portiuncula, without comforts, without possessions, eating anything they could get and sleeping anyhow on the ground. St. Francis answered him with that curious and almost stunning shrewdness which the unworldly can sometimes wield like a club of stone. He said, 'If we had any possessions, we should need weapons and laws to defend them.

There have been household gods and household saints and household fairies. I am not sure that there have yet been any factory gods or factory saints or factory fairies. I may be wrong, as I am no commericial expert, but I have not heard of them as yet.

The people has no definite disbelief in the temples of theology. The people has a very fiery and practical disbelief in the temples of physical science.