Book detail: The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
This compilation includes a variety of Chesterton's essays, poems, and lectures, offering a comprehensive look into his influential and thought-provoking writing.
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“Thinking means connecting things, and stops if they cannot be connected.”
“Every man who will not have softening of the heart must at last have softening of the brain”
“There is no logical connection between flying and laying eggs.”
“There is, therefore, about all complete conviction a kind of huge helplessness.”
“There must be some good in the life of battle, for so many good men have enjoyed being soldiers.”
“If a man only likes victory he must always come late for the battle.”
“Our digestions, going sacredly and silently right, that is the foundation of all poetry.”
“...a figure of speech can often get into a crack too small for a definition.”
“Always be comic in a tragedy. What the deuce else can you do?”
“To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once.”
“There nearly always is a method in madness.”
“The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister.”
“The classes that wash most are those that work least.”
“Your offer," he said, "is far too idiotic to be declined.”
“It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light.”
“Thrift is poetic because it is creative; waste is unpoetic because it is waste.”
“Thinking in isolation and with pride ends in being an idiot.”