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 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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.

• The modern world has far too little understanding of the art of keeping young. Its notion of progress has been to pile one thing on top of another, without caring if each thing was crushed in turn. People forgot that the human soul can enjoy a thing most when there is time to think about it and be thankful for it. And by crowding things together they lost the sense of surprise; and surprise is the secret of joy.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Caring, Thinking

• The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs. It is a disease which arises from men no having sufficient power of expression to utter and get rid of the element of art in their being.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Men, Expression

  1905 Heretics, ch.17.

• Architecture approaches nearer than any other art to being irrevocable because it is so difficult to get rid of.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Architecture, Difficult

• Humility is the luxurious art of reducing ourselves to a point, not to a small thing or a large one, but to a thing with no size at all, so that to it all the cosmic things are what they really are - of immeasurable stature.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Humility, Size

  "The Defendant". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1901.

• Every work of art has one indispensable mark ... the center of it is simple, however much the fulfillment may be complicated.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Simple, May

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