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Absurdity
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It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.
-G. K. Chesterton
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Action(s)
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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.
-G. K. Chesterton
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Adversity
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One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.
-G. K. Chesterton
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Do not free the camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.
-G. K. Chesterton
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Advice
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I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
-G. K. Chesterton
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Age
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Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged.
-G. K. Chesterton
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Alcohol/Alcoholism
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Most Americans are born drunk, and really require a little wine or beer to sober them. They have a sort of permanent intoxication from within, a sort of invisible champagne. Americans do not need to drink to inspire them to do anything, though they do sometimes, I think, need a little for the deeper and more delicate purpose of teaching them how to do nothing.
-G. K. Chesterton
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America
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There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.
-G. K. Chesterton
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Angels
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Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.
-G. K. Chesterton
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Architecture
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All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.
-G. K. Chesterton
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A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims permanence, like a dogma. People ask why we have no typical architecture of the modern world, like impressionism in painting. Surely it is obviously because we have not enough dogmas; we cannot bear to see anything in the sky that is solid and enduring, anything in the sky that does not change like the clouds of the sky.
-G. K. Chesterton
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Argument & Debate
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People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.
-G. K. Chesterton
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Art
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The artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs. Artists of a large and wholesome vitality get rid of their art easily, as they breathe easily or perspire easily. But in artists of less force, the thing becomes a pressure, and produces a definite pain, which is called the artistic temperament.
-G. K. Chesterton
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Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.
-G. K. Chesterton
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Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.
-G. K. Chesterton
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The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In this long vigil he often has to vary his methods of stimulation; but in this long vigil he is also himself striving against a continual tendency to sleep.
-G. K. Chesterton
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Atheism
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Those thinkers who cannot believe in any gods often assert that the love of humanity would be in itself sufficient for them; and so, perhaps, it would, if they had it.
-G. K. Chesterton
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Authors & Writing
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Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
-G. K. Chesterton
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Birds
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A turkey is more occult and awful than all the angels and archangels. In so far as God has partly revealed to us an angelic world, he has partly told us what an angel means. But God has never told us what a turkey means. And if you go and stare at a live turkey for an hour or two, you will find by the end of it that the enigma has rather increased than diminished.
-G. K. Chesterton
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Books
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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.
-G. K. Chesterton
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Boredom
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A yawn is a silent shout.
-G. K. Chesterton
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There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person. Nothing is more keenly required than a defence of bores. When Byron divided humanity into the bores and bored, he omitted to notice that the higher qualities exist entirely in the bores, the lower qualities in the bored, among whom he counted himself. The bore, by his starry enthusiasm, his solemn happiness, may, in some sense, have proved himself poetical. The bored has certainly proved himself prosaic.
-G. K. Chesterton, Heretics
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Bravery
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Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.
-G. K. Chesterton
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Courage is getting away from death by continually coming within an inch of it.
-G. K. Chesterton
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Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.
-G. K. Chesterton
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Books by and about G. K. Chesterton