101 Quotes By Gilbert K. Chesterton


All architecture is great architecture after sunset perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.
Gilbert K. Chesterton on great

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long and the age of the great epics is past.
Gilbert K. Chesterton on great

Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.
Gilbert K. Chesterton on great

The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything.
Gilbert K. Chesterton on great

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
Gilbert K. Chesterton on happiness

Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalised.
Gilbert K. Chesterton on happiness

The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind.
Gilbert K. Chesterton on health

Man does not live by soap alone and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.
Gilbert K. Chesterton on health

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.
Gilbert K. Chesterton on history

To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.
Gilbert K. Chesterton on hope

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
Gilbert K. Chesterton on imagination

A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.
Gilbert K. Chesterton on intelligence

Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged.
Gilbert K. Chesterton on knowledge

The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden heaven is a playground.
Gilbert K. Chesterton on life

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.
Gilbert K. Chesterton on life

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.
Gilbert K. Chesterton on love

Love means to love that which is unlovable or it is no virtue at all.
Gilbert K. Chesterton on love

To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.
Gilbert K. Chesterton on love

Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.
Gilbert K. Chesterton on love

Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.
Gilbert K. Chesterton on marriage