1,399 Quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.

The woman does not work because the man tells her to work and she obeys. On the contrary, the woman works because she has told the man to work and he hasn’t obeyed.

Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances that we know to be desperate.

Marriage is a sort of poetical see-saw.

And all over the world, the old literature, the popular literature, is the same. It consists of very dignified sorrow and very undignified fun. Its sad tales are of broken hearts; its happy tales are of broken heads.

We do not want, as the newspapers say, a church that will move with the world. We want a church that will move the world.

The modern world seems to have no notion of preserving different things side by side, of allowing its proper and proportionate place to each, of saving the whole varied heritage of culture. It has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything.

For us who live in cities Nature is not natural. Nature is supernatural. Just as monks watched and strove to get a glimpse of heaven, so we watch and strive to get a glimpse of earth. It is as if men had cake and wine every day but were sometimes allowed common bread.

Those who leave the tradition of truth do not escape into something which we call Freedom. They only escape into something else, which we call Fashion.