Quotes by Chesterton, Gilbert K.

"The average man votes below himself; he votes with half a mind or a hundredth part of one. A man ought to vote with the whole of himself, as he worships or gets married. A man ought to vote with his head and heart, his soul and stomach, his eye for faces and his ear for music; also (when sufficiently provoked) with his hands and feet. If he has ever seen a fine sunset, the crimson color of it should creep into his vote. The question is not so much whether only a minority of the electorate votes. The point is that only a minority of the voter votes."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on voting
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"The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on vulgarity
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"If prosperity is regarded as the reward of virtue it will be regarded as the symptom of virtue."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on wealth   

"There are many definite methods, honest and dishonest, which make people rich; the only instinct I know of which does it is that instinct which theological Christianity crudely describes as the sin of avarice."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on wealth   

"Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long as you have one good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on wives
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"The world will never starve for want of wonders, but for want of wonder."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on wonder
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"When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on worship
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"No man knows he is young while he is young."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on youth
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"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on adventure
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"One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on adversity
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"Do not free the camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on adversity   

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on christians and christianity
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"The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on cleverness   

"White is not a mere absence of color; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. God paints in many colors; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on color   

"I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on committees and meetings   

"The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on complexity
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"Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf ;is better than a whole loaf."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on compromise   

"I believe in getting into hot water. I think it keeps you clean."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on conflict
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"True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on contentment   

"Being contented ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and resigned to living in it; it ought to mean appreciating all there is in such a position."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on contentment   

"With any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain healthy humiliation."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on convalescence   

"The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on cosmos   

"Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on courage
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"Courage is getting away from death by continually coming within an inch of it."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on courage
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"Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on courage   

"Insincere pessimism is a social accomplishment, rather agreeable than otherwise; and fortunately nearly all pessimism is insincere."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on   

"Many clever men like you have trusted to civilization. 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? "

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on   

"The only argument against losing faith is that you also lose hope – and generally charity."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on faith