9 Gilbert Keith Chesterton Quotes on Creativity

Gilbert Keith Chesterton quotes on creativity

11. If you'd take your head home and boil it for a turnip it might be useful. I can't say. But it might.

61. The one stream of poetry which is continually flowing is slang.

93. A man cannot be wise enough to be a great artist without being wise enough to wish to be a philosopher. A man cannot have the energy to produce good art without having the energy to wish to pass beyond it. A small artist is content with art; a great artist is content with nothing except everything

117. Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.

134. Thrift is the really romantic thing; economy is more romantic than extravagance... thrift is poetic because it is creative; waste is unpoetic because it is waste... if a man could undertake to make use of all the things in his dustbin, he would be a broader genius than Shakespeare.

138. His head was always most valuable when he had lost it. In such moments he put two and two together and made four million.

150. The central idea of poetry is the idea of guessing right, like a child.

159. 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.

166. An artist will betray himself by some sort of sincerity.