There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
Author
Gilbert K. Chesterton
101 quotations
About Gilbert K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton was an English Christian apologist writer. Chesterton's wit, paradoxical style, and defence of tradition made him a dominant figure in early 20th-century literature.
Read on Wikipedia → Find books by Gilbert K. ChestertonTo love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.
People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.
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.
The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind.
Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalised.
I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything.
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Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.
Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long and the age of the great epics is past.
All architecture is great architecture after sunset perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.
There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.
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, …
One sees great things from the valley only small things from the peak.
Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.
It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.
We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
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.
Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisd…
If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God.
White... is not a mere absence of colour it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black... God paints in many colours but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost sa…
Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals wen…
We make our friends we make our enemies but God makes our next door neighbour.
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?