Quotes by
G. K. Chesterton |
1874-1936 , English writer & critic

Chesterton wrote around 80 books, several hundred poems, some 200 short stories, 4000 essays, and several plays.
He was big, standing at 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m) and weighing around 130kg.
39 quotes | 3,849 visits |
Quotations
• | The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him. 16 |
• | To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it. 16 |
• | A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it. 13 |
• | Briefly, you can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it. 13 |
• | If there were no God, there would be no atheists. 10 |
• | There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people. 7 |
• | Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out. 7 |
• | Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable. 7 |
• | Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference which is an elegant name for ignorance. 7 |
• | The rich are the scum of the earth in every country. 7 |
• | There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less. 6 |
• | Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. 6 |
• | Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel. 6 |
• | When some English moralists write about the importance of having character, they appear to mean only the importance of having a dull character. 6 |
• | It is in the very nature of the best sort of joke to be the worst sort of insult if it is not taken as a joke. 6 |
• | It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem. 5 |
• | There is the great lesson of “Beauty and the Beast,” that a thing must be loved before it is lovable. 4 |
• | The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see. 4 |
• | I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean. 4 |
• | There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds. 4 |
• | There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there. 4 |
• | It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it. 4 |
• | Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly; devils fall because of their gravity. 4 |
• | Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed. 3 |
• | An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered. 3 |
• | Journalism largely consists of saying “Lord Jones is Dead ” to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive. 3 |
• | The man who sees the consistency in things is a wit. The man who sees the inconsistency in things is a humorist. 3 |
• | Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity. 2 |
• | A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. 2 |
• | Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak. 2 |
• | There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and a tired man who wants a book to read. 2 |
• | Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist. 2 |
• | The things we see every day are the things we never see at all. 2 |
• | London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation. 2 |
• | All government is an ugly necessity. 2 |
• | When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it. 2 |
• | One can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place. 2 |
• | There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats grapenuts on principle. 2 |
Funny Quotes
• | Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. 3 |