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Acceptance is the truest kinship with humanity.G. K. Chesterton
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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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Artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs.G. K. Chesterton
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The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them.G. K. Chesterton
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Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers.G. K. Chesterton
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The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.G. K. Chesterton
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The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life in order to keep it.G. K. Chesterton
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Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.G. K. Chesterton
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Democracy means government by the uneducated while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.G. K. Chesterton
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Leisure is being allowed to do nothing.G. K. Chesterton
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True contentment is the power of getting of any situation all that there is in it.G. K. Chesterton
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The historic glory of America lies in the fact that it is the one nation that was founded like a church. That is it was founded on a faith that was not merely summed up after it had exited but was defined before it existed.G. K. Chesterton
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Forgiving means to pardon the unpardonable faith means believing the unbelievable and hoping means to hope when things are hopeless.G. K. Chesterton
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You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera and grace before the play and pantomime and grace before I open a book and grace before sketching painting swimming fencing boxing walking playing dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.G. K. Chesterton
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It matters very little whether a man is discontented in the name of pessimism or progress if his discontent does in fact paralyse his power of appreciating what he has got.G. K. Chesterton
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The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.G. K. Chesterton
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True contentment... is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare.G. K. Chesterton
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We make our friends we make our enemies but God makes our next-door neighbour.G. K. Chesterton
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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 men unless they act.G. K. Chesterton
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There is one thing which gives radiance to everything. It is the idea of something around the corner.G. K. Chesterton
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The true object of human life is play.G. K. Chesterton
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The word 'good' has many meanings. For example if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards I should call him a good shot but not necessarily a good man.G. K. Chesterton
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Happiness is a mystery like religion and it should never be rationalized.G. K. Chesterton
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The true object of all human life is play.G. K. Chesterton
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No man can be merry unless he is serious.G. K. Chesterton
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Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time he is not two men but one and he has saved not only his soul but his life.G. K. Chesterton
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The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.G. K. Chesterton
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Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate.G. K. Chesterton
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Forgiving means to pardon the unpardonable Faith means believing the unbelievable And hoping means to hope when things are hopeless.G. K. Chesterton
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A tragedy means always a man's struggle with that which is stronger than man.G. K. Chesterton
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A great city is the place to escape the true drama of provincial life and find solace in fantasy.G. K. Chesterton
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To be clever enough to get all that money one must be stupid enough to want it.G. K. Chesterton
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Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.G. K. Chesterton
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Is dishwater dull? Naturalists with microscopes have told me that it teems with quiet fun.G. K. Chesterton
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Large organization is loose organization. Nay it would be almost as true to say that organization is always disorganization.G. K. Chesterton
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Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump you may be freeing him from being a camel.G. K. Chesterton
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The mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet's but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatic's.G. K. Chesterton
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It isn't that they can't see the solution it's that they can't see the problem.G. K. Chesterton
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New roads new ruts.G. K. Chesterton
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Psychoanalysis is confession without absolution.G. K. Chesterton
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Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.G. K. Chesterton
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Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality because reality is a spirit.G. K. Chesterton
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When people cease to believe in God they don't believe in nothing they believe in anything.G. K. Chesterton
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The Bible tells us to love our neighbors and also to love our enemies probably because they are generally the same people.G. K. Chesterton
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One may understand the cosmos but never the ego the self is more distant than any star.G. K. Chesterton
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Silence is the unbearable repartee.G. K. Chesterton
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To be simple is the best thing in the world.G. K. Chesterton
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The classes that wash most are those that work least.G. K. Chesterton
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A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.G. K. Chesterton
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He who lives in the future lives in a featureless blank he lives in impersonality he lives in Nirvana. The past is democratic because it is a people. The future is despotic because it is a caprice. Every man is alone in his prediction just as each man is alone in a dream.G. K. Chesterton
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Of all modern notions the worst is this: that domesticity is dull. Inside the home they say is dead decorum and routine outside is adventure and variety. But the truth is that the home is the only place of liberty the only spot on earth where a man can alter arrangements suddenly make an experiment or indulge in a whim. The home is not the one tame place in a world of adventure it is the one wild place in a world of rules and set tasks. .G. K. Chesterton
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I am not absent-minded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.G. K. Chesterton
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Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind as of opening the mouth is to shut it again on something solid.G. K. Chesterton
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One sees great things from the valley only small things from the peak.G. K. Chesterton
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A man must love a thing very much if he not only practises it without any hope of fame and money but even practises it without any hope of doing it well.G. K. Chesterton