The quotations of

G. K. Chesterton

English author and Christian apologist

1874–1936

94 quotes, most often on Christianity, God and Truth & Lies. Part of the Writers collection.

There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.
- Christianity
Truth is sacred; and if you tell the truth too often nobody will believe it.
- Truth & Lies
Women are the only realists; their whole object in life is to pit their realism against the extravagant, excessive, and occasionally drunken idealism of men.
- Women
If there were no God, there would be no Atheists.
Where All Roads Lead
- Atheism
Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
“Orthodoxy” (1908), Chapter VII: The Eternal Revolution
Women have a thirst for order and beauty as for something physical; there is a strange female power of hating ugliness and waste as good men can only hate sin and bad men virtue.
Chesterton on Dickens
- Women
Most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities.
What’s Wrong with the World (1910), Part Four: Education: Or the Mistake About the Child, Ch. 6: Authority the Unavoidable
- Freedom
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.
“The Ethics of Elfland,” Orthodoxy (1908), p. 85
- Experience
Love means loving the unlovable⁠—or it is no virtue at all.
Heretics
- Love
I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it.
- Morality
Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.
In The Illustrated London News (23 October 1909)
- Good & Evil
The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.
- Freedom
Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.
Tremendous Trifles (1909), Ch. XXIII: “The Toy Theatre”
- Art
The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.
Often credited to Dante Gabriel Rossetti
- Atheism
Anyone who is not an anarchist agrees with having a policeman at the corner of the street; but the danger at present is that of finding the policeman half-way down the chimney or even under the bed.
What I Saw In America
- Government

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