G. K. Chesterton
English writer and Christian thinker, 1874-1936
23 quotes.
Quotes by G. K. Chesterton
- A stiff apology is a second insult.
- An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.
- Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.
- Beware of no man more than yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.
- Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.
- Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.
- Employers will give time to eat, time to sleep; they are in terror of a time to think.
- Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
- Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.
- Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate.
- Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.
- 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.
- I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
- If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
- 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.
- Real development is not leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them, as on a root.
- The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.
- The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.
- The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.
- There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.
- There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.
- There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.
- When it comes to life, the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.