G.K. Chesterton

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The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

G.K. Chesterton

The Man who was Thursday: A Nightmare

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Chesterton, G.K. "The Man Who Was Thursday." The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton. Vol. 6, Ignatius Press, 1991. Originally published by J.W. Arrowsmith, 1904.

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Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.

G.K. Chesterton

Orthodoxy

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Chesterton, G.K. "Orthodoxy." The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton. Vol. 1, Ignatius Press, 1986, ch. 4. Originally published by John Lane Co., 1908.

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Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.

G.K. Chesterton

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Chesterton, G.K. "Our Note Book." The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton. Vol. 34, Ignatius Press, 1991. Originally published by Illustrated London Times, 5 May 1928.

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They died to save their country and they only saved the world.

G.K. Chesterton

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Chesterton, G.K. "The English Graves." The Ballad of St. Barbara and Other Verses. Cecil Palmer, 1922, I. 18.

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They say travel broadens the mind; but you must have the mind.

G.K. Chesterton

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Original Citation

Chesterton, G.K. "The Poet and the Lunatics." Nash's Magazine, 1921, ch. 3.

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Current Citation

Chesterton, G.K. The Poet and the Lunatics. Dover, 2010, ch. 3.

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The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.

G.K. Chesterton

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Chesterton, G.K. "The Flying Inn." The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, edited by Iain T. Benson. Vol. 7, Ignatius Press, 2005, ch. 15. Originally published by John Lane/Methuen, 1914.

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Fallacies, which do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.

G.K. Chesterton

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Chesterton, G.K. "Novels on the Great War." The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton. Vol. 35, Ignatius Press, 1986. Originally published by Illustrated London News, 19 Apr. 1930.

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An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

G.K. Chesterton

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Chesterton, G.K. "On Running After One's Hat." In Defense of Sanity: The Best Essays of G.K. Chesterton. Ignatius Press, 2011. Originally published by Methuen & Company, 1908.

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Neither reason nor faith will ever die; for men would die if deprived of either.

G.K. Chesterton

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Chesterton, G.K. "Anti-Religious Thought in the Eighteenth Century." An Outline of Christianity; The Story of Our Civilization. Vol. 4. Christianity and Modern Thought. The Waverley Book Co., 1926, pt. 3.

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To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.

G.K. Chesterton

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Chesterton, G.K. "A Short History of England." The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton. Vol. 20, Ignatius Press, 2002. Originally published by William Clowes and Sons, 1917.

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The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.

G.K. Chesterton

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Chesterton, G.K. "What's Wrong with the World." The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton. Vol. 4, Ignatius Press, 1987, pt. 1. Originally published by Cassell, 1910, pt. 1.

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Our civilization has decided, and very justly decided, that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men.... When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round.

G.K. Chesterton

Tremendous Trifles

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Chesterton, G.K. "The Twelve Men." In Defense of Sanity: The Best Essays of G.K. Chesterton. Ignatius Press, 2011. Originally published by Methuen, 1909.

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Among the Very Rich you will never find a really generous man, even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egoistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.

G.K. Chesterton

Read A Miscellany of Men at Project Gutenberg

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Chesterton, G.K. "A Miscellany of Men." The Wit, Whimsy and Wisdom of G.K. Chesterton. Vol. 6, Coachwhip Publications, 2009. Originally published by Methuen, 1912 .

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Every one of the great revolutionists, from Isaiah to Shelley, have been optimists. They have been indignant, not about the badness of existence, but about the slowness of men in realizing its goodness.

G.K. Chesterton

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Chesterton, G.K. "The Defendant." The Wit, Whimsy and Wisdom of G.K. Chesterton. Vol. 6, Coachwhip Publications, 2009, introduction. Originally published by R. Brinley Johnson, 1901.

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Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.

G.K. Chesterton

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Chesterton, G.K. "The Defendant." The Wit, Whimsy and Wisdom of G.K. Chesterton. Vol. 6, Coachwhip Publications, 2009. Originally published by R. Brinley Johnson, 1901.

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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.

G.K. Chesterton

Orthodoxy

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Chesterton, G.K. "Orthodoxy." The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton. Vol. 1, Ignatius Press, 1986, ch. 4. Originally published in by John Lane Co., 1908.

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All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.

G.K. Chesterton

Orthodoxy

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Chesterton, G.K. "Orthodoxy." The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton. Vol. 1, Ignatius Press, 1986, ch. 4. Originally published by John Lane Co., 1908.

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To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.

G.K. Chesterton

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Chesterton, G.K. "The House of Christmas." Poems. John Lane Company, 1916.

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Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction...For fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it.

G.K. Chesterton

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Chesterton, G.K. "The Club of Queer Trades." The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton. Vol. 6, Ignatius Press, 1991. Originally published by Harper & Brothers, 1905.

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It has often been said, very truly, that religion is the thing that makes the ordinary man feel extraordinary; it is an equally important truth that religion is the thing that makes the extraordinary man feel ordinary.

G.K. Chesterton

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Chesterton, G.K. Charles Dickens: A Critical Study. Dodd Mead & Company, 1906, ch. 1.

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