1,399 Quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

St Thomas (Aqinas) loved books and lived on books... When asked for what he thanked God most, he answered simply, ‘I have understood every page I ever read’.

I think the oddest thing about the advanced people is that, while they are always talking about things as problems, they have hardly any notion of what a real problem is.

Such professions as the soldier and the lawyer ... give ample opportunity for crimes but not much for mere illusions. ... If you have lost a battle you cannot believe you have won it; if your client is hanged you cannot pretend that you have gotten him off.

You!" he cried. "You never hated because you never lived. I know what you are all of you, from first to last--you are the people in power! You are the police--the great, fat smiling men in blue and buttons! You are the Law, and you have never been broken. But is there a free soul alive that does not long to break you, only because you have never been broken?

The miser is the man who starves himself and everybody else, in order to worship wealth in its dead form, as distinct from its living form.

When belief in God becomes difficult, the tendency is to turn away from Him; but in heaven's name to what?

In the end it will not matter to us whether we wrote well or ill; whether we fought with flails or reeds. It will matter to us greatly on what side we fought.

How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.

Physical science is like simple addition: it is either infallible or it is false.