Quote

There is no obligation on us to be richer, or busier, or more efficient, or more productive, or more progressive, or any way worldlier or wealthier, if it does not make us happier.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Age: 62 †
Born: 1874
Born: May 29
Died: 1936
Died: June 14
Autobiographer
Biographer
Crime Writer
Essayist
Historian
Illustrator
Journalist
Literary Historian
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Philosopher
Beaconsfield
Buckinghamshire
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Gilbert Chesterton
G.K. Chesterton
G. K. C.
Progressive
Productive
Obligation
Simple
Wealthier
Doe
Busier
Way
Richer
Make
Happier
Efficient

More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

Image
To desire money is much nobler than to desire success. Desiring money may mean desiring to return to your country, or marry the woman you love, or ransom your father from brigands. But desiring success must mean that you take an abstract pleasure in the unbrotherly act of distancing and disgracing other men.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Democracy is like blowing your nose. You may not do it well, but it's something you ought to do yourself.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Savages and modern artists are alike strangely driven to create something uglier than themselves. but the artists find it harder.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
I may not practice what I preach but God forbid I should preach what I practice
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
There are two ways of getting home and one of them is to stay there.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Humour is meant, in a literal sense, to make game of man that is, to dethrone him from his official dignity and hunt him like game.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
The original quality in any man of imagination is imagery.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven't got any.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Precisely because our political speeches are meant to be reported, they are not worth reporting. Precisely because they are carefully designed to be read, nobody reads them.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Family is the theatre of the spiritual drama, the place where things happen, especially the things that matter.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
It is quite an old-fashioned fallacy to suppose that our objection to scepticism is that it removes the discipline from life. Our objection to scepticism is that it removes the motive power. Materialism is not a thing which destroys mere restraint. Materialism itself is the great restraint.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
The decay of society is praised by artists as the decay of a corpse is praised by worms.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
When giving treats to friends or children, give them what they like, emphatically not what is good for them.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Image
I might inform those humanitarians who have a nightmare of new and needless babies (for some humanitarians have that sort of horror of humanity) that if the recent decline in the birth-rate were continued for a certain time, it might end in there being no babies at all which would console them very much.
Gilbert K. Chesterton