Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes
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451. “There is only one thing that stands in our midst, attenuated and threatened, but enthroned in some power like a ghost of the Middle Ages: the Trade Unions.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

452. “Our society is so abnormal that the normal man never dreams of having the normal occupation of looking after his own property. When he chooses a trade, he chooses one of the ten thousand trades that involve looking after other people’s property.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

453. “I am at one with my duality.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

454. “The Universe is the most extraordinary masterpiece ever constructed by nobody.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

455. “If you’d take your head home and boil it for a turnip it might be useful. I can’t say. But it might.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

456. “The whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a perpetual crisis.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

457. “One can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

458. “Laughter has something in it common with the ancient words of faith and inspiration; it unfreezes pride and unwinds secrecy; it makes people forget themselves in the presence of something greater than themselves.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

459. “No man’s really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be...”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

460. “Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

461. “The voice of the special rebels and prophets, recommending discontent, should, as I have said, sound now and then suddenly, like a trumpet. But the voices of the saints and sages, recommending contentment, should sound unceasingly, like the sea.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

462. “A sober man may become a drunkard through being a coward. A brave man may become a coward through being a drunkard.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

463. “Correctitude implies nowadays a formal or fastidious use of words; and what is wanted is not so much the correct as the living use of words. It is the memory of the meaning of a word which is the life of the word.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

464. “There are two kinds of charlatan: the man who is called a charlatan, and the man who really is one. The first is the quack who cures you; the second is the highly qualified person who doesn’t.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

465. “Women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

466. “A good joke is the closest thing we have to divine revelation.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

467. “The full value of this life can only be got by fighting; the violent take it by storm. And if we have accepted everything we have missed something – war. This life of ours is a very enjoyable fight, but a very miserable truce.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

468. “Your next-door neighbor is not a man; he is an environment. He is the barking of a dog; he is the noise of a piano; he is a dispute about a party wall; he is drains that are worse than yours, or roses that are better than yours.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

469. “The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

470. “If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

471. “Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall be gloriously surprised.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

472. “You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

473. “The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

474. “As an explanation of the world materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has the quality of a madman’s arguments; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

475. “To be wrong, and to be carefully wrong, that is the definition of decadence.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

476. “Human anger is a higher thing than what is called divine discontent. For you must be angry with something; but you can be discontented with everything.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

477. “It is better to speak wisdom foolishly like the saints than to speak folly wisely like the deans.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

478. “Big Business and State Socialism are very much alike, especially Big Business.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

479. “Anyone who is not an anarchist agrees with having a policeman at the corner of the street; but the danger at present is that of finding the policeman half-way down the chimney or even under the bed.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

480. “It is hard to make government representative when it is also remote.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

481. “Gluttony is a great fault; but we do not necessarily dislike a glutton. We only dislike the glutton when he becomes a gourmet-that is, we only dislike him when he not only wants the best for himself, but knows what is best for other people.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

482. “Silence is the unbearable repartee.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

483. “Men rush toward complexity; but yearn for simplicity.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

484. “The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

485. “A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

486. “I represent the jolly mass of mankind. I am the happy and reckless Christian.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

487. “Wit is a sword; it is meant to make people feel the point as well as see it.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

488. “I came to the conclusion that the optimist thought everything good except the pessimist, and that the pessimist thought everything bad, except himself.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

489. “If the apple hit Newton’s nose, Newton’s nose hit the apple.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

490. “All we know of the Missing Link is that he is missing – and he won’t be missed either.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

491. “The great saint may be said to mix all his thoughts with thanks. All goods look better when they look like gifts.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

492. “Dipsomaniac and the abstainer are not only both mistaken, but they both make the same mistake. They both regard wine as a drug and not as a drink.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

493. “If we want to give poor people soap we must set out deliberately to give them luxuries. If we will not make them rich enough to be clean, then empathically we must do what we did with the saints. We must reverence them for being dirty.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

494. “Every remedy is a desperate remedy. Every cure is a miraculous cure. Curing a madman is not arguing with a philosopher; it is casting out a devil.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

495. “Women are the only realists; their whole object in life is to pit their realism against the extravagant, excessive, and occasionally drunken idealism of men.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

496. “And it did for one wild moment cross my mind that, perhaps, those might not be the very best judges of the relation of religion to happiness who, by their own account, had neither one nor the other.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

497. “Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

498. “Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

499. “No man should leave in the universe anything of which he is afraid.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

500. “If the devil tells you something is too fearful to look at, look at it. If he says something is too terrible to hear, hear it. If you think some truth unbearable, bear it.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton