Chesterton Quotes

I just couldn’t resist.  Even though I posted a link to GKC Quotes in my last entry, I’m compelled to share some here for all to savor.  As a writer who encompassed social commentary, political satire, literary criticism, philosophical ponderings, Christian apologetics, poetics and plain humor in his writing, G. K. Chesterton’s (1874-1936) wit and wisdom surpassed the social and political environment of his time:

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“My country, right or wrong,” is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case.  It is like saying, “My mother, drunk or sober.”

 

“A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

 

“By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece.”

 

“Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.”

 

“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”

 

“Journalism largely consists of saying ‘Lord Jones is Dead’ to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.”

 

“Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.”

 

“Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.”

 

“The most astonishing thing about miracles is that they happen.”

 

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

 

“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”

  

“If there were no God, there would be no Atheists.”

 

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Links to more GKC quotes:

The American Chesterton Society Quotations Collection

The Quotations Page