Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

A man who has become conscious of the absurd is for ever bound to it.

Homo sapiens, the only creature endowed with reason, is also the only creature to pin its existence on things unreasonable.

The proper study of Mankind is Man.

The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment, it is all that links them together.

Life itself is pretty funny when you realize how absurd it can be.

Obviously the idea of being human is a very human idea.

If you examine any aspect of the human condition long enough, you really do have to start laughing at it. Because the business of being human is kind of ridiculous.

I guess what I always found funny was the human condition.

The meaningless absurdity of life is the only incontestable knowledge accessible to man.

The absurd is only too necessary on earth. The world stands on absurdities.

The philosophers talk to you about the dignity of man, and they tempt you to pride, or they talk to you about the misery of man, and they tempt you to despair.

How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, How complicate, how wonderful, is man!... Midway from nothing to the Deity!

What is man that his welfare be considered? An ape who chatters of kinship with the archangels while he very filthily digs for groundnuts. And yet I perceive that this same man is a maimed God. He is condemned under penalty to measure eternity with an hourglass and infinity with a yardstick and what is more, he very nearly does it.

What is ridiculous about human beings, Doctor,' the prince said, 'is actually their total incapacity to be ridiculous

Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable.

Could anything be absurder than a man? The animal who knows everything about himself--except why he was born and the meaning of his unique existence.

Life becomes fully understandable only the moment we realise that we are all mad.

A sense of absurdity interferes with my efforts to appear venerable.

Man is so great that his greatness appears even in the consciousness of his misery. A tree does not know itself to be miserable. It is true that it is misery indeed to know one's self to be miserable; but then it is greatness also. In this way, all man's miseries go to prove his greatness. They are the miseries of a mighty potentate, of a dethroned monarch.

The absurd is lucid reason noting its limits.

Our own peculiar human condition is that we are as fit to be laughed at as able to laugh.

I know myself a Man-- Which is a proud and yet a wretched thing.

L'homme est une passion inutile. Man is a useless passion.

Where, but in the simplicity of the Gospel, can you hear about both the dignity of man and the misery of man?