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