WIST

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.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
“Child Psychology and Nonsense” (15 Oct 1921)

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 Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
“Holding on to Romanticism,” The Illustrated London News (2 May 1931)

The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
“The Methuselahite,” All Things Considered (1915)

Father Brown laid down his cigar and said carefully: “It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.”

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
“The Point of a Pin,” The Scandal of Father Brown (1925)

It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
“The Point of a Pin,” The Scandal of Father Brown (1935)

People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
(Attributed)

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

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
(Attributed)

It’s not the world that’s gotten so much worse, but the news coverage that’s gotten so much better.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
(Attributed)

The whole order of things is as outrageous as any miracle which could presume to violate it.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
(Attributed)

If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
(Attributed)

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

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
(Attributed)

For religion all men are equal, as all pennies are equal, because the only value in any of them is that they bear the image of the king.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
(Attributed)

It is the test of a good religion whether you can make a joke about it.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
(Attributed)

A businessman is the only man who is forever apologizing for his occupation.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
(Attributed)

Among the rich you will never find a really generous man even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egotistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
A Miscellany of Men (1912)

The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
A Miscelleny of Men, “The Angry Author: His Farewell (1912)

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
A Short History of England (1917)

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
A Short History of England (1917)

All government is an ugly necessity.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
A Short History of England (1917)

All government is an ugly necessity.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
A Short History of England (1917)

It is not only possible to say a great deal in praise of play; it is really possible to say the highest things in praise of it. It might reasonably be maintained that the true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground. To be at last in such secure innocence that one can juggle with the universe and the stars, to be so good that one can treat everything as a joke — that may be, perhaps, the real end and final holiday of human souls.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
All Things Considered, “Oxford from Without” (1908)
Full text.

It is so easy to be solemn; it is so hard to be frivolous.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
All Things Considered, “The Case for the Ephemeral” (1908)

There are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don’t know it.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
As I Was Saying: A Chesterton Reader, ch. 17 [ed. R. Knille] (1985)

Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
Autobiography (1936)

Bowing down in blind credulity, as is my custom, before mere authority and the tradition of the elders, superstitiously swallowing a story I could not test at the time by experiment or private judgment, I am firmly of the opinion that I was born on the 29th of May, 1874, on Campden Hill, Kensington ….

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
Autobiography (1936)

A man has been lucky in marrying the women he loves. But he is luckier in loving the woman he marries.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
Brave New Family
ed. Alvaro de Silva (1990)

When anyone goes about on his hands and knees looking for a great man to worship, he is making sure that one man at any rate shall not be great.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
Charles Dickens, ch. 1 (1906)

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
Charles Dickens, Ch. 11 (1906)

The wise old fairy tales never were so silly as to say that the prince and the princess lived peacefully ever afterwards. The fairy tales said that the prince and the princess lived happily, and so they did. They lived happily, although it is very likely that from time to time they threw the furniture at each other. Most marriages, I think, are happy marriages; but there is no such thing as a contented marriage. The whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a perpetual crisis.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
Chesterton on Dickens (1911)

The dispute that goes on between Macbeth and his wife about the murder of Duncan is almost word for word a dispute which goes on at any suburban breakfast table about something else. It is merely a matter of changing ‘Infirm of purpose, give me the daggers’ into ‘Infirm of purpose, give me the postage stamps.’

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
Chesterton on Shakespeare
ed. Dorothy Collins (1972)