G.K. Chesterton Quotes

But the more shrewdly and earnestly we study the histories of men, the less ready shall we be to make use of the word ‘artificial.’ Nothing in the world has ever been artificial. Many customs, many dresses, many works of art are branded with artificiality because the exhibit vanity and self-consciousness: as if vanity were not a deep and elemental thing, like love and hate and the fear of death. Vanity may be found in darkling deserts, in the hermit and in the wild beasts that crawl around him. It may be good or evil, but assuredly it is not artificial: vanity is a voice out of the abyss.

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.

One sees great things from the valley only small things from the peak.

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.

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.

I am not absent-minded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.

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.

A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.