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Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes about Art

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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.

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.

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.

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

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 is born when the temporary touches the eternal.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Art, Born, Eternal

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

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Beauty, Beautiful, Art

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

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.

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”

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

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

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Art, Italian, Men

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

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

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 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

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”

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

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

We are talking about an artist; and for the enjoyment of the artist the mask must be to some extent moulded on the face. What he makes outside him must correspond to something inside him; he can only make his effects out of some of the materials of his soul.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Art, Soul, Faces
"The Dagger with Wings". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1926.

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

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

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.

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.

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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