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You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.
— Gilbert Keith 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.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Only men to whom the family is sacred will ever have a standard or a status by which to criticize the State. They alone can appeal to something more holy than the gods of the city.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
To have a right to do a thing is not the same as to be right in doing it.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The grinding power of the plain words of the Gospel story is like the power of mill-stones, and those who can read them simply enough will feel as if rocks had been rolled upon them.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
A good novel tells us the truth about it's hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The trouble with Christianity is, not that its failed, but that it's never been tried ... not that it can't remake the world, but that it's difficult.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Human anger is a higher thing than what is called divine discontent. For you must be angry with something; but you cannot be discontented with everything.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid. There is no big man who has not felt small. Some men never feel small; but these are the few men who are.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
When people begin to ignore human dignity, it will not be long before they begin to ignore human rights.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
One sees great things from the valley, only small things from the peak.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Feminists are those who cannot stand female characteristics.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
There is one thing which gives radiance to everything. It is the idea of something around the corner.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
What a glorious garden of wonders the lights of Broadway would be to anyone lucky enough to be unable to read.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Courage is the strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Without education, we are in the horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
There is more simplicity in a man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats grapenuts in principle.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Jokes are generally honest. Complete solemnity is always dishonest.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
In the end it will not matter to us whether we fought with flails or reeds. It will matter to us greatly on what side we fought.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The more we are certain what good is, the more we shall see good in everything.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The chief object of education is not to learn things but to unlearn things.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Art is limitation: the essence of every picture is the frame.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Americans are a very backward people, with all the real virtues of a backward people; the patriarchal simplicity and human dignity of a democracy, and a respect for labor uncorrupted by cynicism.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Art, like morality, consists in drawing a line somewhere.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Criticism is only words about words, and of what use are words about such words as these?
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
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