Gilbert Keith Chesterton or G.K.Chesterton was an English Writer. He was also called “prince of paradox”. He was born on 29th may 1874 at London, England. He got his early education at St Paul’s School at Kensington in London. Then he joined Slade School of Art to become an illustrator, he also took education at University College London. Journalism, Christianity and fantasy influence all his literature. The literature is related to philosophy, poetry, biography, apologetics, fantasy and detective fiction. He is one of the few Christian thinkers who are admired by conservative Christians and indexed by non-Christians. Chesterton wrote many poems, stories plays and lot of essays. Most of his poetry is still unknown.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (G.K. Chesterton) Quotes, Sayings and Quotations

A child kicks its legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough… It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again,” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again,” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike: it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
- G.K.Chesterton

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
- G.K.Chesterton

A man must be orthodox upon most things, or he will never even have time to preach his own heresy.
- G.K.Chesterton

A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying.
- G.K.Chesterton

Beneath the rule of men entirely great, / The pen is mightier than the sword.
- G.K.Chesterton

Better to have loved a short man than never to have loved a tall.
- G.K.Chesterton

Bigotry may be roughly defined as the anger of men who have no opinions.
- G.K.Chesterton

Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.
- G.K.Chesterton

Briefly, you can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.
- G.K.Chesterton

Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.
- G.K.Chesterton

Continuing a series on God and the human condition: That Jones shall worship the “god within him” turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones. Let Jones worship the sun or moon — anything rather than the Inner Light; let Jones worship cats or crocodiles, if he can find any in his street, but not the god within. Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognized an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners.
- G.K.Chesterton

Commemoration of Martyrs of Japan, 1597 Those who charged the Christians with burning down Rome with fire brands were slanderers — but they were, at least, far nearer to the nature of Christianity than those among the moderns who tell us that the Christians were a sort of ethical society, being martyred in a languid fashion for telling men they had a duty to their neighbours, and only mildly disliked because they were meek and mild!
- G.K.Chesterton

Commemoration of Mary Slessor, Missionary in West Africa, 1915 It is vain for bishops and pious bigwigs to discuss what dreadful things will happen if wild skepticism runs its course. It has run its course. It is vain for eloquent atheists to talk of the great truths that will be revealed if once we see free thought begin. We have seen it end. It has no more questions to ask; it has questioned itself. You cannot call up any wilder vision than a city in which men ask themselves if they have any selves. You cannot fancy a more skeptical world than that in which men doubt whether there is a world. It might certainly have reached its bankruptcy more quickly and cleanly if it had not been feebly hampered by the application of indefensible laws of blasphemy or by the absurd pretense that modern England is Christian. But it would have reached the bankruptcy anyhow.
- G.K.Chesterton

Destiny is but a phrase of the weak human heart – the dark apology for every error. The strong and virtuous admit no destiny. On earth conscience guides; in heaven God watches. And destiny is but the phantom we invoke to silence the one and dethrone the other.
- G.K.Chesterton

Diplomacy is the art of saying “Nice doggie” until you can find a rock.
- G.K.Chesterton

Every man knows his follies and often they are the most interesting thing he has got.
- G.K.Chesterton

I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.
- G.K.Chesterton

If Christianity should happen to be true — that is to say, if its God is the real God of the universe — then defending it may mean talking about anything and everything. Things can be irrelevant to the proposition that Christianity is false, but nothing can be irrelevant to the proposition that Christianity is true. [All] things not only may have something to do with the Christian God, but must have something to do with Him if He lives and reigns.
- G.K.Chesterton

If you are afraid of loneliness, don’t marry.
- G.K.Chesterton

Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.
- G.K.Chesterton

It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.
- G.K.Chesterton

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another. – “On the Cryptic and the Elliptic”, 1908.
- G.K.Chesterton

Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.
- G.K.Chesterton

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
- G.K.Chesterton

Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.
- G.K.Chesterton

Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity.
- G.K.Chesterton

‘My country, right or wrong,’ is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, ‘My mother, drunk or sober.’
- G.K.Chesterton

People generally quarrel because they can’t argue.
- G.K.Chesterton

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
- G.K.Chesterton

Reporters should have printed what he meant, not what he said.
- G.K.Chesterton

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.
- G.K.Chesterton

The center of every man’s existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like a toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel.

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

The coziness between church and state is good for the state and bad for the church.
- G.K.Chesterton

The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange.
- G.K.Chesterton

The IRS spends God knows how much of your tax money on these toll-free information hot lines staffed by IRS employees, whose idea of a dynamite tax tip is that you should print neatly. If you ask them a real tax question, such as how you can cheat, they’re useless. So, for guidance, you want to look to big business. Big business never pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes…
- G.K.Chesterton

The only thing that has kept the race of men from the mad extremes of the convent and the pirate-galley, the night-club and the lethal chamber, has been mysticism — the belief that logic is misleading, and that things are not what they seem.
- G.K.Chesterton

The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life in order to keep it.
- G.K.Chesterton

The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman. But the materialist’s world is quite simple and solid, just as the madman is quite sure he is sane.
- G.K.Chesterton

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.
- G.K.Chesterton

Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.
- G.K.Chesterton

Virtue is not the absense of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate ting, like pain or a particular smell. – Tremendous Trifles.
- G.K.Chesterton

We are all in the same boat in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.
- G.K.Chesterton

We say, not lightly but very literally, that the truth has made us free. They say that it makes us so free that it cannot be the truth. To them it is like believing in fairyland to believe in such freedom as we enjoy. It is like believing in men with wings to entertain the fancy of men with wills. It is like accepting a fable about a squirrel in conversation with a mountain to believe in a man who is free to ask or a God who is free to answer. This is a manly and a rational negation, for which I for one shall always show respect. But I decline to show any respect for those who first of all clip the bird and cage the squirrel, rivet the chains and refuse the freedom, close all the doors of the cosmic prison on us with a clang of eternal iron, tell us that our emancipation is a dream and our dungeon a necessity; and then calmly turn round and tell us they have a freer thought and a more liberal theology.
- G.K.Chesterton

When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it.
- G.K.Chesterton

When Michelangelo finished the painting of the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling, he spent the rest of his life trying to remove the paint that had poured into his sleeve.
- G.K.Chesterton