Quotes by GK Chesterton

I can't remember whick books I got some of these from. If you'd like to remind me, please do!


The obvious effect of frivolous divorce will be frivolous marriage. If people can be separated for no reason they will feel it all the easier to be united for no reason.--The Superstition of Divorce

If there were no God, there would be no atheists.

Being good is a an adventure far more violent and daring than sailing around the world.

Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad, but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers, but creative artists very seldom.

Romance is more solid than realism, and that for a very evident reason. The things that men happen to get in this life depend upon quite shifting accidents and conditions. But the things that they desire and dream of are always the same.

Unfortunately, under the stress of the struggle which arose out of the menacing organization of the League of the Long Bow, they sought to dazzle their followers with new improbabilities instead of adhering to the tried and trusty improbabilities that had done them yeoman service in the past.--Tales of the Long Bow

"The very last thing the soldier generally knows is what has really happened. He has to look at a newspaper next morning for the realistic description of what never happened."--Tales of the Long Bow

"We ought not to have all gone mad at once. We ought to have taken it in turns to go mad. Then I could have been shocked at his behaviour on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and he could have been shocked at my behaviour on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. But there is no moral value in going mad when nobody is shocked."--Tales of the Long Bow

The two older men had eccentric tastes of their own; but there is always a difference between the eccentricity of an elderly man who defies the world and the enthusiasm of a younger man who hopes to alter it. The old gentleman may be willing, in a sense, to stand on his head; but he does not hope, as the boy does, to stand the world on its head.--Tales of the Long Bow

Posting a letter and getting married are among the few things left that are entirely romantic; for to be entirely romantic, a thing must be irrevocable.

It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense, and can't see things as they are.

It is the fashion to talk of institutions as cold and cramping things. The truth is that when people are in exceptionally high spirits, really wild with freedom and invention they always must, and they always do, create institutions. When men are weary they fall into anarchy; but while they are gay and vigorous they invariably make rules. This, which is true of all the churches and republics of history, is also true of the most trivial parlour game or the most unsophisticated meadow romp. We are never free until some institution frees us; and liberty cannot exist till it is declared by authority.--Manalive

"What we all dread most is a maze with no centre. That is why atheism is only a nightmare." --The Wisdom of Father Brown

It is the small things rather than the large things which make war against us and, I may add, beat us. --The Club of Queer Trades

"His reasoning is particularly cold and clear, and invariably leads him wrong. But his poetry comes in abruptly and leads him right.--The Club of Queer Trades

Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it. --The Club of Queer Trades

It is our nature always to follow vanishing things and value them if they really show a resolution to depart. --The Club of Queer Trades

It is true that all sensible women think all studious men mad. It is true, for the matter of that, all women of any kind think all men of any kind mad.--The Club of Queer Trades

Why should a man be thought a sort of idiot because he feels the mystery and peril of existence itself? --The Club of Queer Trades

"Communism pretends to be oh so modern; but it is not. Throwback to the superstitions of monks and primitive tribes. A scientific government, with a really ethical responsibility to posterity, would be always looking for the line of promise and progress; not leveling and flattening it all back into the mud again. Socialism is sentamentalism; and more dangerous than a pestilence, for in that at least the fittest would survive."---The Scandal of Father Brown

"Heresy always does effect morality, if it's heretical enough. I suppose a man may honestly believe that thieving isn't wrong. But what's the good of saying that he honestly believes in dishonesty?"---The Scandal of Father Brown