“But the more shrewdly and earnestly we study the histories of men, the less ready shall we be to make use of the word ‘artificial.’ Nothing in the world has ever been artificial. Many customs, many dresses, many works of art are branded with artificiality because the exhibit vanity and self-consciousness: as if vanity were not a deep and elemental thing, like love and hate and the fear of death. Vanity may be found in darkling deserts, in the hermit and in the wild beasts that crawl around him. It may be good or evil, but assuredly it is not artificial: vanity is a voice out of the abyss.”
— G.K. Chesterton
“A man must love a thing very much if he not only practises it without any hope of fame and money but even practises it without any hope of doing it well.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“One sees great things from the valley only small things from the peak.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“Of all modern notions the worst is this: that domesticity is dull. Inside the home they say is dead decorum and routine outside is adventure and variety. But the truth is that the home is the only place of liberty the only spot on earth where a man can alter arrangements suddenly make an experiment or indulge in a whim. The home is not the one tame place in a world of adventure it is the one wild place in a world of rules and set tasks.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“I am not absent-minded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind as of opening the mouth is to shut it again on something solid.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“He who lives in the future lives in a featureless blank he lives in impersonality he lives in Nirvana. The past is democratic because it is a people. The future is despotic because it is a caprice. Every man is alone in his prediction just as each man is alone in a dream.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“The classes that wash most are those that work least.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“To be simple is the best thing in the world.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“Silence is the unbearable repartee.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“One may understand the cosmos but never the ego the self is more distant than any star.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“The Bible tells us to love our neighbors and also to love our enemies probably because they are generally the same people.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“When people cease to believe in God they don’t believe in nothing they believe in anything.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality because reality is a spirit.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“Psychoanalysis is confession without absolution.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“New roads new ruts.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“It isn’t that they can’t see the solution it’s that they can’t see the problem.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“The mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet’s but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatic’s.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump you may be freeing him from being a camel.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“Large organization is loose organization. Nay it would be almost as true to say that organization is always disorganization.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“There is but an inch of difference between the cushioned chamber and the padded cell.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“Is dishwater dull? Naturalists with microscopes have told me that it teems with quiet fun.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“To be clever enough to get all that money one must be stupid enough to want it.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“A great city is the place to escape the true drama of provincial life and find solace in fantasy.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“A tragedy means always a man’s struggle with that which is stronger than man.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“Forgiving means to pardon the unpardonable Faith means believing the unbelievable And hoping means to hope when things are hopeless.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate.”
— G. K. Chesterton