Gilbert K. Chesterton Literature Quotations

The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.

Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf; is better than a whole loaf.

Women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes.

What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

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

Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal man does not amaze.

Large organization is loose organization. Nay, it would be almost as true to say that organization is always disorganization.

When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.

Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young.

Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.

Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.

Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalised.

The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men.

Coincidences are spiritual puns.

Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kid of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty.

If, therefore, nonsense is really to be the literature of the future, it must have its own version of the Cosmos to offer; the world must not only be tragic, romantic, and religious, it must be nonsensical also.

The hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle. Upon this paradox, we might almost say upon this jest, all the literature of our faith is founded.

The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say.

The beautification of the world is not a work of nature, but a work of art, then it involves an artist.

Savages and modern artists are alike strangely driven to create something uglier than themselves. but the artists find it harder.

The decay of society is praised by artists as the decay of a corpse is praised by worms.

Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt.

The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life.

The present condition of fame is merely fashion.

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.

Classic literature is still something that hangs in the air like a song.

Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.

The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.