Gilbert K. Chesterton

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it, so I signed up for acting instead.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The word 'good' has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbour.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalised.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton