Inspirational Quotes by G.K. Chesterton

“It's just because I have picked a little about mystics that I have no use for mystagogues. Real mystics don't hide mysteries, they reveal them. They set a thing up in broad daylight, and when you've seen it it's still a mystery. But the mystagogues hide a thing in darkness and secrecy, and when you find it, it's a platitude.”

“Are you thankful for not being young?' 'Yes, sir. If I was young, it would all have to be gone through again, and the end would be a weary way off, don't you see?...”

“I don't feel any vulgar gratitude to you[for helping me]. I almost feel as if You ought to be grateful to ME, for giving you the opportunity of enjoying the luxury of generosity. . . I may have come into the world expressly for the purpose of increasing your stock of happiness. I may have been born to be a benefactor to you, by giving you an opportunity of assisting me. ”

“Good never come of such evil, a happier end was not in nature to so unhappy a beginning.”

“O God!' I screamed, and 'O God!' again and again; for there before my eyes--pale and shaken, and half fainting, and groping before him with his hands, like a man restored from death--there stood Henry Jekyll!”

“It is easy to be solemn, it is so hard to be frivolous.”

“America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just. It certainly does condemn anarchism, and it does also by inference condemn atheism, since it clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived. Nobody expects a modern political system to proceed logically in the application of such dogmas, and in the matter of God and Government it is naturally God whose claim is taken more lightly. The point is that there is a creed, if not about divine, at least about human things.”

“She was nothing more than a mere good-tempered, civil and obliging Young Woman; as such we could scarcely dislike her -- she was only an Object of Contempt”

“Servants don't know a good master till they have served a worse.”

“Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine.”

“United you will be more than a match for your enemies. But if you quarrel and separate, your weakness will put you at the mercy of those who attack you.”

“That child of Hell had nothing human; nothing lived in him but fear and hatred.”

“Then I'm sorry to say, I've eat your pie.”

“If Innocent is happy, it is because he is innocent. If he can defy the conventions, it is just because he can keep the commandments. It is just because he does not want to kill but to excite to life that a pistol is still as exciting to him as it is to a schoolboy. It is just because he does not want to steal, because he does not covet his neighbour's goods, that he has captured the trick (oh, how we all long for it!), the trick of coveting his own goods. It is just because he does not want to commit adultery that he achieves the romance of sex; it is just because he loves one wife that he has a hundred honeymoons.”

“It was the curse of mankind that these incongruous faggots were thus bound togetherthat in the agonised womb of consciousness these polar twins should be continuously struggling. How then were they dissociated”

“Notoriety is often mistaken for fame.”

“It is the most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home.”

“...and memory, however sad, is the best and purest link between this world and a better. But come! I'll tell you a story of another kind.”

“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.”

“I have lost confidence in myself.”