Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

One of the things that I'm fascinated about generally is the rise and fall of everything, from civilizations to families to companies.

History is a great cemetery: men, deeds, ideas are always dying as soon as they are born.

I think that any authentic feeling one has of life should be a feeling of defeat. It's a losing game. You're going to die. Civilization is going to end. Our society is in decline, and we should feel OK about it because Roman society was in decline and before it the Assyrian one was, and they disappeared off this earth and we will disappear too.

For thogh we slepe, or wake, or rome, or ryde, Ay fleeth the tyme; it nyl no man abyde.

Even Rome cannot grant us a dispensation from death.

And I will die, and you will die, and we all will die, and even the stars will fade out one after another in time.

Even kings but play; and when their part is done, some other, worse or better, mounts the throne.

The human body is in constant change the minute we're born. It's in a constant state of decay. We're all like Ford Escorts, just falling apart.

With life as short as a half-taken breath, don't plant anything but love.

If man reflects on the changes and transformations which follow one another like wave after wave and their rapidity, he will despise everything which is perishable.

You may be reborn a thousand times, but you can never know the real, for only that which dies, that which comes to an end, can renew itself.

Things shouldn't hinge on so very little. Sneeze and you're highway carnage. Remove one tiny stone and you're an avalanche statistic. But I guess if you can die without ever understanding how it happened then you can also live without a complete understanding of how. And in a way that's kind of relaxing.

O time, swift robber of all created things, how many kings, how many nations hast thou undone, and how many changes of states and of various events have happened since the wondrous forms of this fish perished here in this cavernous and winding recess. Now destroyed by time thou liest patiently in this confined space with bones stripped and bare; serving as a support and prop for the superimposed mountain.

The very stone one kicks with one's boot will outlast Shakespeare.

the knowledge of impermanence that haunts our days is their very fragrance.

He that hath one foot in the straw, hath another in the spittle.

Death is not the opposite of life. Life has no opposite. Death is the opposite of birth.

The Universe is very, very big. It also loves a paradox. For example, it has some extremely strict rules. Rule number one: Nothing lasts forever. Not you or your family or your house or your planet or the sun. It is an absolute rule. Therefore when someone says that their love will never die, it means that their love is not real, for everything that is real dies. Rule number two: Everything lasts forever.

We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. but there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it.

Die before you die, there is no chance after.

We all know that the theater and every play that comes to Broadway have within themselves, like the human being, the seed of self-destruction and the certainty of death. The thing is to see how long the theater, the play, and the human being can last in spite of themselves.

In the midst of life, we are in death.

Life has a very simple plot: first you're here and then you're not.

The best break anybody ever gets is in bein' alive in the first place. An' you don't unnerstan' what a perfect deal it is until you realizes that you ain't gone be stuck with it forever, either.