Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes About Art

• At the back of our brains is a blaze of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life is to dig for this sunrise of wonder.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Spiritual, Art, Brain

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

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Funny Friend, Drawing

  "The Golden Book" Magazine, Vol. 7, (p. 323), 1928.

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

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Sunset, Bad Ass

• The artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs. Artists of a large and wholesome vitality get rid of their art easily, as they breathe easily or perspire easily. But in artists of less force, the thing becomes a pressure, and produces a definite pain, which is called the artistic temperament.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Pain, Pressure

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (1909). “Heretics”

• 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

  Art, Lying, Long

  Tremendous Trifles (1909) "On Lying in Bed"

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

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Beauty, Beautiful, Art

• We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Mean, Common Sense

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.38, Simon and Schuster

• Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If in your bold creative way you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Essence, Long

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.28, Simon and Schuster

• A small artist is content with art; a great artist is content with nothing except everything.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Contentment, Artist

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (1909). “Heretics”

• Art is born when the temporary touches the eternal.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Born, Eternal

• The decay of society is praised by artists as the decay of a corpse is praised by worms.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Decay, Literature

• Savages and modern artists are alike strangely driven to create something uglier than themselves. but the artists find it harder.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Savages, Literature

• The beautification of the world is not a work of nature, but a work of art, then it involves an artist.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Literature, World

• And all over the world, the old literature, the popular literature, is the same. It consists of very dignified sorrow and very undignified fun. Its sad tales are of broken hearts; its happy tales are of broken heads.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Fun, Broken

• The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Mean, Literature

• The new school of art and thought does indeed wear an air of audacity, and breaks out everywhere into blasphemies, as if it required any courage to say a blasphemy. There is only one thing that it requires real courage to say, and that is a truism.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Courage, Art, Real

• Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Philosophy, Reality

  1908 Orthodoxy, ch.3.

• There is nothing harder to learn than painting and nothing which most people take less trouble about learning. An art school is a place where about three people work with feverish energy and everybody else idles to a degree that I should have conceived unattainable by human nature.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, School, Should Have

• Art is the signature of man.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Men, Signatures

  "The Everlasting Man". Book by G. K. Chesterton, Part I: On the Creature Called Man, 1925.

• For the mass of men the idea of artistic creation can only be expressed by an idea unpopular in present discussions - the idea of property... Property is merely the art of the democracy... One would think, to hear people talk, that the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers were on the side of property. But obviously they are the enemies of property; because they are enemies of their own limitations.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Men, Thinking

• The poetry of art is in beholding the single tower; the poetry of nature in seeing the single tree; the poetry of love in following the single woman; the poetry of religion in worshipping the single star.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Stars, Tree

• It is the simple truth that man does differ from the brutes in kind and not in degree; and the proof of it is here; that it sounds like a truism to say that the most primitive man drew a picture of a monkey and that it sounds like a joke to say that the most intelligent monkey drew a picture of a man. Something of division and disproportion has appeared; and it is unique. Art is the signature of man.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Intelligent, Unique

  "The Everlasting Man". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, Part I: On the Creature Called Man, 1925.

• The sort of man who admires Italian art while despising Italian religion is a tourist and a cad.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Italian, Men

• A fairly clear line separated advertisement from art. ... The first effect of the triumph of the capitalist (if we allow him to triumph) will be that that line of demarcation will entirely disappear. There will be no art that might not just as well be advertisement.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Triumph, Lines

  "Utopia of Usurers". p. 6. Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1917.

• All that we call spirit and art and ecstacy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forgot.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Mean, Awful

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.38, Simon and Schuster

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