1,399 Quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

If a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ's.

No animal ever invented anything as bad as drunkenness - or so good as drink.

To desire money is much nobler than to desire success. Desiring money may mean desiring to return to your country, or marry the woman you love, or ransom your father from brigands. But desiring success must mean that you take an abstract pleasure in the unbrotherly act of distancing and disgracing other men.

Men rush toward complexity; but yearn for simplicity.

Only poor men get hanged.

The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.

The aesthete aims at harmony rather than beauty. If his hair does not match the mauve sunset against which he is standing, he hurriedly dyes his hair another shade of mauve. If his wife does not go with the wall-paper, he gets a divorce.

You cannot grow a beard in a moment of passion.

Why should ANYTHING go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?