G. K. Chesterton

• One of the deepest and strangest of all human moods is the mood which will suddenly strike us perhaps in a garden at night, or deep in sloping meadows, the feeling that every flower and leaf has just uttered something stupendously direct and important, and that we have by a prodigy of imbecility not heard or understood it. There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic ignorance.
  • Source: the biography Robert Browning. (1903)

• The truth is that Tolstoy, with his immense genius, with his colossal faith, with his vast fearlessness and vast knowledge of life, is deficient in one faculty and one faculty alone. He is not a mystic; and therefore he has a tendency to go mad. Men talk of the extravagances and frenzies that have been produced by mysticism; they are a mere drop in the bucket. In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was logic. ...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.
  • Tolstoy (1903)

• Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of 'touching' a man's heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it.
  • Twelve Types (1903) Charles II

• The word 'orthodoxy' not only no longer means being right; it practically means being wrong.
  • Heretics (1905)

• The rolling stone rolls echoing from rock to rock; but the rolling stone is dead. The moss is silent because the moss is alive.
  • Heretics (1905)

• Carlyle said that men were mostly fools. Christianity, with a surer and more reverent realism, says that they are all fools. This doctrine is sometimes called the doctrine of original sin. It may also be described as the doctrine of the equality of men.
  • Heretics (1905)

• Man can hardly be defined ... as an animal who makes tools; ants and beavers and many other animals make tools, in the sense that they make an apparatus. Man can be defined as an animal that makes dogmas.
  • Heretics (1905)

• 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.
  • Charles Dickens (1906)

• Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity.
  • The Man Who was Thursday (1908)

• And it is always the humble man who talks too much; the proud man watches himself too closely.
  • The Man Who was Thursday (1908)

• For fear of the newspapers politicians are dull, and at last they are too dull even for the newspapers.
  • All Things Considered (1908)

• When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven't got any.
  • Illustrated London News (11-7-08)

• Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before.
  • Tremendous Trifles (1909)

• What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.
  • Tremendous Trifles (1909)

• Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.
  • Illustrated London News (10/23/09)

• The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.
  • Illustrated London News (7/16/10)

• The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
  • What's Wrong With The World (1910)

• It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions. We announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding. We do not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a scaffolding. Yet this latter fact is fundamentally more exciting, as indicating that that moving tower of terror and mystery, a man, is still abroad upon the earth. That the man has not fallen off a scaffolding is really more sensational; and it is also some thousand times more common. But journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus to insist upon the permanent miracles. Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters, “Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe,” or “Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet.” They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complex picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual. However democratic they may be, they are only concerned with the minority.
  • The Ball and the Cross (1910)

• 'As for science and religion, the known and admitted facts are few and plain enough. All that the parsons say is unproved. All that the doctors say is disproved. That's the only difference between science and religion there's ever been, or will be.'
  • Michael Moon in Manalive (1912)

• The academic mind reflects infinity, and is full of light by the simple process of being shallow and standing still.'
  • Inglewood in Manalive (1912)

• The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.
  • The Flying Inn (1914)

• To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
  • A Short History of England (1917)

• All government is an ugly necessity.
  • A Short History of England (1917)

• 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.
  • Illustrated London News (4/6/18)

• It is terrible to contemplete how few politicians are hanged.
  • The Cleveland Press (3/1/21)

• There are two ways of dealing with nonsense in this world. One way is to put nonsense in the right place; as when people put nonsense into nursery rhymes. The other is to put nonsense in the wrong place; as when they put it into educational addresses, psychological criticisms, and complaints against nursery rhymes or other normal amusements of mankind.
  • Child Psychology and Nonsense (October 15, 1921)

• If there were no God, there would be no atheists.
  • Where All Roads Lead (1922)

• A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.
  • Everlasting Man (1925)

• These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own.
  • Illustrated London News (8-11-28)

• Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.
  • Illustrated London News (4/19/30)

• The modern world seems to have no notion of preserving different things side by side, of allowing its proper and proportionate place to each, of saving the whole varied heritage of culture. It has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything.
  • On Love

• It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.
  • The Point of a Pin

Orthodoxy (1909)

• The materialist philosophy (whether true or not) is certainly much more limiting than any religion. In one sense, of course, all intelligent ideas are narrow. They cannot be broader than themselves. A Christian is only restricted in the same sense that an atheist is restricted. He cannot think Christianity false and continue to be a Christian; and the atheist cannot think atheism false and continue to be an atheist.

• There is a very special sense in which materialism has more restrictions than spiritualism. Mr. McCabe thinks me a slave because I am not allowed to believe in determinism. I think Mr. McCabe a slave because he is not allowed to believe in fairies. But if we examine the two vetoes we shall see that his is really much more of a pure veto than mine. The Christian is quite free to believe that there is a considerable amount of settled order and inevitable development in the universe. But the materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle. Poor Mr. McCabe is not allowed to retain even the tiniest imp, though it might be hiding in a pimpernel.

• 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.

• Materialists and madmen never have doubts.

• Spiritual doctrines do not actually limit the mind as do materialistic denials. Even if I believe in immortality I need not think about it. But if I disbelieve in immortality I must not think about it. In the first case the road is open and I can go as far as I like; in the second the road is shut.

The "Father Brown" Mystery Series

The Dagger with Wings (1926)

• You have no business to be an unbeliever. You ought to stand for all the things these stupid people call superstitions. Come now, don’t you think there’s a lot in those old wives’ tales about luck and charms and so on, silver bullets included? What do you say about them as a Catholic?’
  ‘I say I’m an agnostic,’ replied Father Brown, smiling.
  ‘Nonsense,’ said Aylmer impatiently. ‘It’s your business to believe things.’
  ‘Well, I do believe some things, of course,’ conceded Father Brown; ‘and therefore, of course, I don’t believe other things.’

• 'You do believe it,' he said. ‘You do believe everything. We all believe everything, even when we deny everything. The denyers believe. The unbelievers believe. Don’t you feel in your heart that these contradictions do not really contradict: that there is a cosmos that contains them all? The soul goes round upon a wheel of stars and all things return; perhaps Strake and I have striven in many shapes, beast against beast and bird against bird, and perhaps we shall strive for ever. But since we seek and need each other, even that eternal hatred is an eternal love. Good and evil go round in a wheel that is one thing and not many. Do you not realize in your heart, do you not believe behind all your beliefs, that there is but one reality and we are its shadows; and that all things are but aspects of one thing: a centre where men melt into Man and Man into God?’
  ‘No,’ said Father Brown.

• He had the notion that because I am a clergyman I should believe anything. Many people have little notions of that kind.

• All things are from God; and above all, reason and imagination and the great gifts of the mind. They are good in themselves; and we must not altogether forget their origin even in their perversion.

• ‘I’m afraid I’m a practical man,’ said the doctor with gruff humour, ‘and I don’t bother much about religion and philosophy.’
  ‘You’ll never be a practical man till you do,’ said Father Brown. ‘Look here, doctor; you know me pretty well; I think you know I’m not a bigot. You know I know there are all sorts in all religions; good men in bad ones and bad men in good ones.

• Yet he is right enough about there being a white magic, if he only knows where to look for it.

The Ballad of the White Horse (1911)

A Song of Defeat

• Our chiefs said 'Done,' and I did not deem it;
  Our seers said 'Peace,' and it was not peace;
  Earth will grow worse till men redeem it,
  And wars more evil, ere all wars cease.

• For we that fight till the world is free,
  We are not easy in victory:
  We have known each other too long, my brother,
  And fought each other, the world and we.

• It is all as of old, the empty clangour,
  The NOTHING scrawled on a five-foot page,
  The huckster who, mocking holy anger,
  Painfully paints his face with rage.
  …
  We that fight till the world is free,
  We have no comfort in victory;
  We have read each other as Cain his brother,
  We know each other, these slaves and we.

The Great Minimum

• In a time of sceptic moths and cynic rusts,
  And fattened lives that of their sweetness tire
  In a world of flying loves and fading lusts,
  It is something to be sure of a desire.
  
  Lo, blessed are our ears for they have heard;
  Yea, blessed are our eyes for they have seen:
  Let the thunder break on man and beast and bird
  And the lightning. It is something to have been.

• It is something to have wept as we have wept,
  It is something to have done as we have done,
  It is something to have watched when all men slept,
  And seen the stars which never see the sun.
  
  It is something to have smelt the mystic rose,
  Although it break and leave the thorny rods,
  It is something to have hungered once as those
  Must hunger who have ate the bread of gods.

• To have seen you and your unforgotten face,
  Brave as a blast of trumpets for the fray,
  Pure as white lilies in a watery space,
  It were something, though you went from me today.
  
  To have known the things that from the weak are furled,
  Perilous ancient passions, strange and high;
  It is something to be wiser than the world,
  It is something to be older than the sky.

Attributed:

• A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

• A man looking at a hippopotamus may sometimes be tempted to regard a hippopotamus as an enormous mistake; but he is also bound to confess that a fortunate inferiority prevents him personally from making such mistakes.

• A man's opinion on tramcars matters; his opinion on Botticelli matters; his opinion on all things does not matter.

• A sober man may become a drunkard through being a coward. A brave man may become a coward through being a drunkard.

• America has a new delicacy, a coarse, rank refinement.

• As enunciated today, 'progress' is simply a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative.

• Charity is the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible. Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate.

• Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up.

• Either criticism is no good at all (a very defensible position) or else criticism means saying about an author the very things that would have made him jump of his boots.

• Every man speaks of public opinion, and means by public opinion, public opinion minus his opinion.

• Happiness is a mystery like religion, and should never be rationalised.

• He is a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of a conservative.

• Honour is a luxury for aristocrats, but it is a necessity for hall-porters.

• If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

• Many clever men like you have trusted to civilisation. Many clever Babylonians, many clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilisation, what there is particularly immortal about yours?

• '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'.

• Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.

• Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

• Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich. The word 'kleptomania' is a vulgar example of what I mean.

• The oligarchic character of the modern English commonwealth does not rest, like many oligarchies, on the cruelty of the rich to the poor. It does not even rest on the kindness of the rich to the poor. It rests on the perennial and unfailing kindness of the poor to the rich.

• The reason angels can fly is that they take themselves so lightly.

• There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.

• There is something to be said for every error; but, whatever may be said for it, the most important thing to be said about it is that it is erroneous.

• Thrift is the really romantic thing; economy is more romantic than extravagance...thrift is poetic because it is creative; waste is unpoetic because it is waste...if a man could undertake to make use of all the things in his dustbin, he would be a broader genius than than Shakespeare.

• To be born into this earth is to be born into uncongenial surroundings, hence to be born into a romance.

• We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity.

• When some English moralists write about the importance of having character, they appear to mean only the importance of having a dull character.

• Tolerance is the virtue of a man without convictions.

• Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

• Fairy tales are more than true - not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.

• You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.

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