Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

With all that we hear of American hustle and hurry, it is rather strange that Americans seem to like to linger on longer words.

The secularists have not wrecked divine things; but the secularists have wrecked secular things, if that is any comfort to them. The Titans did not scale heaven; but they laid waste the world.

The Universe is the most extraordinary masterpiece ever constructed by nobody.

There are arguments for atheism, and they do not depend, and never did depend, upon science. They are arguable enough, as far as they go, upon a general survey of life; only it happens to be a superficial survey of life.

Education is implication. It is not the things you say which childrenrespect; when you say things, they very commonly laugh and do the opposite.It is the things you assume which really sink into them. It is the thingsyou forget even to teach that they learn.

But there is in everything a reasonable division of labour. I have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it.

Now there is any amount of this nonsense cropping up among American cranks. Anybody may propose to establish coercive Eugenics; or enforce psychoanalysis that is, enforce confession without absolution.

…But nature does not say that cats are more valuable than mice; nature makes no remark on the subject. She does not even say that the cat is enviable or the mouse pitiable. We think the cat superior because we have (or most of us have) a particular philosophy to the effect that life is better than death. But if the mouse were a German pessimist mouse, he might not think that the cat had beaten him at all. He might think he had beaten the cat by getting to the grave first.

[Buddhism and Christianity] are in one sense parallel and equal; as a mound and a hollow, as a valley and a hill. There is a sense in which that sublime despair is the only alternative to that divine audacity. It is even true that the truly spiritual and intellectual man sees it as sort of dilemma; a very hard and terrible choice. There is little else on earth that can compare with these for completeness. And he who does not climb the mountain of Christ does indeed fall into the abyss of Buddha.

Jokes are generally honest. Complete solemnity is always dishonest.

When belief in God becomes difficult, the tendency is to turn away from Him; but in heaven’s name to what?

Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalised.