Wit & Wisdom: G.K. Chesterton Quotes

Daily quotes from English author and journalist G.K. Chesterton

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From the Daily Chesterton Quote Curator:

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May 16th, 2013
When everything about a people is for the time growing weak and ineffective, it begins to talk about efficiency. So it is that when a man’s body is a wreck he begins, for the first time, to talk about health. Vigorous organisms talk not about their processes, but about their aims.

G.K. Chesterton in Heretics

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May 15th, 2013
The old restriction meant that only the orthodox were allowed to discuss religion. Modern liberty means that nobody is allowed to discuss it. Good taste, the last and vilest of human superstitions, has succeeded in silencing us where all the rest have failed.

G.K. Chesterton in Heretics

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May 14th, 2013
At any innocent tea-table we may easily hear a man say, “Life is not worth living.” We regard it as we regard the statement that it is a fine day; nobody thinks that it can possibly have any serious effect on the man or on the world. And yet if that utterance were really believed, the world would stand on its head. Murderers would be given medals for saving men from life; firemen would be denounced for keeping men from death; poisons would be used as medicines; doctors would be called in when people were well; the Royal Humane Society would be rooted out like a horde of assassins. Yet we never speculate as to whether the conversational pessimist will strengthen or disorganize society; for we are convinced that theories do not matter.

G.K. Chesterton in Heretics

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May 13th, 2013
We will have no generalizations. Mr. Bernard Shaw has put the view in a perfect epigram: “The golden rule is that there is no golden rule.” We are more and more to discuss details in art, politics, literature. A man’s opinion on tramcars matters; his opinion on Botticelli matters; his opinion on all things does not matter. He may turn over and explore a million objects, but he must not find that strange object, the universe; for if he does he will have a religion, and be lost. Everything matters — except everything.

G.K. Chesterton in Heretics

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May 12th, 2013
The word ‘heresy’ not only means no longer being wrong; it practically means being clear-headed and courageous. The word ‘orthodoxy’ not only no longer means being right; it practically means being wrong. All this can mean one thing, and one thing only. It means that people care less for whether they are philosophically right.

G.K. Chesterton in Heretics

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May 11th, 2013
There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect. Men do not quarrel about the meaning of sunsets; they never dispute that the hawthorn says the best and wittiest thing about the spring.

G.K. Chesterton in The Defendant

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May 10th, 2013
The one stream of poetry which is continually flowing is slang.

G.K. Chesterton in The Defendant

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May 9th, 2013
As for science and religion, the known and admitted facts are few and plain enough. All that the parsons say is unproved. All that the doctors say is disproved. That’s the only difference between science and religion there’s ever been, or will be.

G.K. Chesterton in Manalive

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May 8th, 2013
A man looking at a hippopotamus may sometimes be tempted to regard a hippopotamus as an enormous mistake; but he is also bound to confess that a fortunate inferiority prevents him personally from making such mistakes.

G.K. Chesterton in Charles Dickens

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If there were not God, there would be no atheists.

G.K. Chesterton in Where all Roads Lead

[note: often misquoted as “If there were no God, there would be no atheists.”]

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