Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalised. Gilbert K. Chesterton More Quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton More Quotes From Gilbert K. Chesterton Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair. Gilbert K. Chesterton religiousfaithlove Against a dark sky all flowers look like fireworks. There is something strange about them, at once vivid and secret, like flowers traced in fire in the phantasmal garden of a witch. Gilbert K. Chesterton gardenflowerdark The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion. Gilbert K. Chesterton discussionargumenthate I've been to every park in every city and not seen a statue to a committee. Gilbert K. Chesterton committeesparkscities Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt. Gilbert K. Chesterton buddhismliteraturedoubt There is nothing harder to learn than painting and nothing which most people take less trouble about learning. An art school is a place where about three people work with feverish energy and everybody else idles to a degree that I should have conceived unattainable by human nature. Gilbert K. Chesterton should-haveartschool I have formed a very clear conception of patriotism. I have generally found it thrust into the foreground by some fellow who has something to hide in the background. I have seen a great deal of patriotism; and I have generally found it the last refuge of the scoundrel. Gilbert K. Chesterton scoundrelslastsfound The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange. Gilbert K. Chesterton functionstrangeimagination When men have come to the edge of a precipice, it is the lover of life who has the spirit to leap backwards, and only the pessimist who continues to believe in progress. Gilbert K. Chesterton progressmenbelieve A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition. Gilbert K. Chesterton intelligenceintuitionsupport The woman does not work because the man tells her to work and she obeys. On the contrary, the woman works because she has told the man to work and he hasn’t obeyed. Gilbert K. Chesterton contrarydoemen A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. Gilbert K. Chesterton readingherobook Instead of looking at books and pictures about the New Testament I looked at the New Testament. There I found an account, not in the least of a person with his hair parted in the middle or his hands clasped in appeal, but of an extraordinary being with lips of thunder and acts of lurid decision, flinging down tables, casting out devils, passing with the wild secrecy of the wind from mountain isolation to a sort of dreadful demagogy; a being who often acted like an angry god — and always like a god. Gilbert K. Chesterton hairbookhands 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. Gilbert K. Chesterton heritagedifferentculture Why do all the clerks and navvies in the railway trains look so sad and tired, so very sad and tired? I will tell you. It is because they know that the train is going right. It is because they know that whatever place they have taken a ticket for that place they will reach. It is because after they have passed Sloane Square they know that the next station must be Victoria, and nothing but Victoria. Oh, their wild rapture! oh, their eyes like stars and their souls again in Eden, if the next station were unaccountably Baker Street! Gilbert K. Chesterton tiredstarstaken I would look at the first chapter of any new novel as a final test of its merits. If there was a murdered man under the sofa in the first chapter, I read the story. If there was no murdered man under the sofa in the first chapter, I dismissed the story as tea-table twaddle, which it often really was. Gilbert K. Chesterton finalsteamen The original quality in any man of imagination is imagery. Gilbert K. Chesterton qualityimaginationmen Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity. Gilbert K. Chesterton levityviolencelaughing Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before. Gilbert K. Chesterton up-earlymorningnight I believe in preaching to the converted; for I have generally found that the converted do not understand their own religion. Gilbert K. Chesterton preachingfoundbelieve
