If there is one person who disproves the saying that variety is the spice of life, it is Gilbert Chesterton. This extraordinary individual was a writer, journalist, philosopher, orator, and artist – and he managed to excel in all these fields. His wit and wisdom are still renowned to this day, over 100 years after his death.
We are glad to present you the best Making Mistakes, Truth, Time, Human Beings, Life, World, Reason, Believing, Modern quotes from Gilbert Chesterton, and much more.
Helps to reveal patterns and emotional needs behind your digital toxic habits.
Born:
29 May 1874
Died:
14 June 1936
Occupation:
Essayist, Poet
Citizenship:
British
Education:
St Paul’s School
Alma Mater:
Slade School Of Art University College London
Period:
1900-1936
Genre:
Essays, Fantasy, Christian Apologetics, Catholic Apologetics, Mystery, Poetry
Literary Movement:
Catholic Literary Revival
Notable Works:
The Napoleon Of Notting Hill The Man Who Was Thursday Orthodoxy Father Brown Stories The Everlasting Man
In real life the people who are most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Adventure is the champagne of life. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
How much larger your life would be if you were smaller in it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
She had never really listened to anyone in her life; which, some said, was why she had survived. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Romance is the deepest thing in life. It is deeper than reality. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Adventure is the champagne of life, but I prefer my champagne and my adventures dry. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
The only object of liberty is life. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
The true object of human life is play. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Life is indeed terribly complicated–to a man who has lost his principles. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a story–teller — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Life exists for the love of music or beautiful things. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
People in high life are hardened to the wants and distresses of mankind as surgeons are to their bodily pains. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
A great city is the place to escape the true drama of provincial life, and find solace in fantasy. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
With every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story which we are certain to misunderstand. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
The moderns do not realize modernity. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Modern toleration is really a tyranny. It is a tyranny because it is a silence. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Modern broad–mindedness benefits the rich; and benefits nobody else. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Modern man is educated to understand foreign languages and misunderstand foreigners. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
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. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
If there is one thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals, it is the modern strengthening of minor morals. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Savages and modern artists are alike strangely driven to create something uglier than themselves. but the artists find it harder. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
A modern man may disapprove of some of his sweeping reforms, and approve others; but finds it difficult not to admire even where he does not approve. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
If you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will have no answer except slanging or silence. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
None of the modern machines, none of the modern paraphernalia. . . have any power except over the people who choose to use them. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Half a truth is better than no politics. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
The whole truth is generally the ally of virtue; a half–truth is always the ally of some vice. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Great truths can only be forgotten and can never be falsified. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Truths turn into dogmas the minute they are disputed. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Truth can understand error, but error cannot understand truth. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
In truth, there are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogma and know it, and those who accept dogma and don’t know it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
In matters of truth the fact that you don’t want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
But the truth is that it is only by believing in God that we can ever criticise the Government. Once abolish the God, and the Government becomes the God. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
In truth the Church is too unique to prove herself unique. For most popular and easy proof is by parallel; and here there is no parallel. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Whether a man chooses to tell the truth in long sentences or short jokes is a problem analogous to whether he chooses to tell the truth in French or in German. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
The martyr endured tortures to affirm his belief in truth but he never asserted his disbelief in torture. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
The truth is that there are no things for which men will make such herculean efforts as the things of which they know they are unworthy. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Christianity met the mythological search for romance by being a story and the philosophical search for truth by being a true story. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
A man must be orthodox upon most things, or he will never even have time to preach his own heresy. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
I still believe in liberalism today as much as I ever did, but, oh, there was a happy time when I believed in liberals. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
It is not greedy to enjoy a good dinner, any more than it is to enjoy a good concert. But I do think there is something greedy about trying to enjoy the dinner and the concert at the same time. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Every time a man knocks on a brothel door, he is really knocking for God — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Of being strong and brave. The strong can not be brave. Only the weak can be brave; and yet again, in practice, only those who can be brave can be trusted, in time Of doubt, to be strong. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
It is the beginning of all true criticism of our time to realize that it has really nothing to say, at the very moment when it has invented so tremendous a trumpet for saying it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs? — Gilbert K. Chesterton
To be simple is the best thing in the world. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
We have had no good comic operas of late, because the real world has been more comic than any possible opera. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
My brain and this world don’t fit each other; and there’s an end of it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
The most poetical thing in the world is not being sick. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
It’s not the world that’s got so much worse but the news coverage that’s got so much better. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but absence of self–criticism. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
In a world where everything is ridiculous, nothing can be ridiculed. You cannot unmask a mask. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Dear Sir: Regarding your article ‘What’s Wrong with the World?’ I am. Yours truly. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
It is well sometimes to half understand a poem in the same manner that we half understand the world. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
The modern world… has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
In a world flagrant with the failures of civilization, what is there particularly immortal about our own? — Gilbert K. Chesterton
If the world becomes pagan and perishes, the last man left alive would do well to quote the Iliad and die. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
The books that influence the world are those that it has not read. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Playing as children means playing is the most serious thing in the world. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Every one on the earth should believe that he has something to give to the world which cannot otherwise be given. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Gratitude, being nearly the greatest of human duties, is also nearly the most difficult. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
To downgrade the human mind is bad theology. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Hell is God’s great compliment to the reality of human freedom and the dignity of human choice. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
It is human to err; and the only final and deadly error, among all our errors, is denying that we have ever erred. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
An almost unnatural vigilance is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Wherever there is animal worship, there is human sacrifice. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
It seems a pity that psychology has destroyed all our knowledge of human nature. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
It is the main earthly business of a human being to make his home, and the immediate surroundings of his home, as symbolic and significant to his own imagination as he can. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
When people begin to ignore human dignity, it will not be long before they begin to ignore human rights. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Original sin is the only doctrine that’s been empirically validated by 2,000 years of human history. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
A madman is not someone who has lost his reason but someone who has lost everything but his reason — Gilbert K. Chesterton
The prophet and the quack are alike admired for a generation, and admired for the wrong reasons. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Realism is simply Romanticism that has lost its reason…that is its reason for existing. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
There is only one reason an intelligent person doesn’t believe in miracles. He or she believes in materialism. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
The difficulty of explaining ‘why I am a Catholic’ is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
The reason that angels fly is that they take themselves so lightly. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Truth is sacred; and if you tell the truth too often nobody will believe it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Though I believe in liberalism, I find it difficult to believe in liberals. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Tolerance is the virtue of those who don’t believe anything. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
When a man ceases to believe in god, he does not believe in nothing. He believes in everything. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
If I did not believe in God, I should still want my doctor, my lawyer and my banker to do so. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
The danger of loss of faith in God is not that one will believe in nothing, but rather that one will believe in anything. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
The modern materialists are not permitted to doubt; they are forbidden to believe. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
It’s natural to believe in the supernatural. It never feels natural to accept only natural things. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
I believe your own accent is inimitable, though I shall practice it in my bath. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Right is Right even if nobody does it. Wrong is wrong even if everybody is wrong about it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
To be wrong, and to be carefully wrong, that is the definition of decadence. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Not only does ‘orthodox’ no longer mean being right, it practically means being wrong. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
I don’t need a church to tell me I’m wrong where I already know I’m wrong; I need a Church to tell me I’m wrong where I think I’m right — Gilbert K. Chesterton
It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
The Reformer is always right about what’s wrong. However, he’s often wrong about what is right. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Gilbert Chesterton’s words are as true today as they were when he first said them and offer a fresh perspective on the role of marketing in our lives. We hope you’ve enjoyed this collection of quotes and that they have inspired you to take a new look at your own marketing strategy. If you’re looking for more ways to learn about how to apply these principles, be sure to check out our courses.
