G. K. Chesterton Quotes

English author and Christian apologist (1874–1936)

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was a British writer whose prolific and diverse output included works of philosophy, ontology, poetry, play writing, journalism, public lecturing and debating, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics (particularly for Catholicism), and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction. He has been called the "prince of paradox".

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Native Name: Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Alternative Names: František Kafka • Kafka • Gilbert K. Chesterton • Gilbert Chesterton • G.K. Chesterton • G. K. C.

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A fairly clear line separated advertisement from art. ... The first effect of the triumph of the capitalist (if we allow him to triumph) will be that that line of demarcation will entirely disappear. There will be no art that might not just as well be advertisement.

Life is indeed terribly complicated — to a man who has lost his principles.

With every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story which we are certain to misunderstand.

I will not call it my philosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it made me.

There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats Grape-Nuts on principle.

For even the most dehumanized modern fantasies depend on some older and simpler figure; the adventures may be mad, but the adventurer must be sane.

Free verse is like free love; it is a contradiction in terms.

If you know what a man's doing, get in front of him; but if you want to guess what he's doing keep behind him.

In the days of my youth the Religion of Humanity was a term commonly applied to Comtism, the theory of certain rationalists who worshipped corporate mankind as a Supreme Being. Even in the days of my youth, I remarked that there was something slightly odd about despising and dismissing the doctrine of the Trinity as a mystical and even maniacal contradiction; and then asking us to adore a deity who is a hundred million persons in one God, neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance. p. 83

Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable. Never drink when you are wretched without it, or you will be like the grey-faced gin-drinker in the slum; but drink when you would be happy without it, and you will be like the laughing peasant of Italy. Never drink because you need it, for this is rational drinking, and the way to death and hell. But drink because you do not need it, for this is irrational drinking, and the ancient health of the world.

Unless a man becomes the enemy of an evil, he will not even become its slave but rather its champion.

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

As for science and religion, the known and admitted facts are few and plain enough. All that the parsons say is unproved. All that the doctors say is disproved. That's the only difference between science and religion there's ever been, or will be.

"When I had a look at the lights of Broadway by night, I said to my American friends : "What a glorious garden of wonders this would be, to any who was lucky enough to be unable to read

The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.