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A Madman Is Not Someone Who Has Lost His Reason But Someone Who Has Lost Everything But His Reason
-Gilbert K. Chesterton
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A Madman Is Not

Gilbert K. Chesterton
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A Madman Is Not Someone Who Has Lost His Reason But Someone Who Has Lost Everything But His Reason

Understanding the Quote: "a madman is not someone who has lost his reason but someone..."

This quote by Gilbert K. Chesterton reflects deeply on the theme of lost everything. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Lost Everything, Reason, Lost, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Gilbert K. Chesterton interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Gilbert K. Chesterton

Gilbert K. Chesterton is celebrated for insightful thoughts on lost everything and reason. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Lost Everything
Reason
Lost
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Oscar Wilde Said That Sunsets Were Not Valued Because We Could Not Pay For Sunsets. But Oscar Wilde Was Wrong; We Can Pay For Sunsets. We Can Pay For Them By Not Being Oscar Wilde.
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The Criminal Is The Creative Artist; The Detective Only The Critic.
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I Still Hold. . .that The Suburbs Ought To Be Either Glorified By Romance And Religion Or Else Destroyed By Fire From Heaven, Or Even By Firebrands From The Earth.
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Facts By Themselves Can Often Feed The Flame Of Madness, Because Sanity Is A Spirit.
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Humor Can Get In Under The Door While Seriousness Is Still Fumbling At The Handle
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There Should Be A Burnished Tablet Let Into The Ground On The Spot Where Some Courageous Man First Ate Stilton Cheese, And Survived.
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No Sane Person, I Hope, Would Accuse Me Of Saying That Every Distributist Must Drink Beer; Especially If He Could Brew His Own Cider Or Found Claret Better For His Health. But I Do Most Emphatically Scorn And Scout The Vulgar Refinement That Regards Beer As Something Unseemly And Humiliating. And I Would Shout The Name Of Beer A Hundred Times A Day, To Shock All The Snobs Who Have So Shameful A Sense Of Shame.
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There's A Lot Of Difference Between Listening And Hearing.
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Thinking In Isolation And With Pride Ends In Being An Idiot.
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An Inconvenience Is An Adventure Wrongly Considered.
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There Are No Wise Few; For In All Men Rages The Folly Of The Fall. Take Your Strongest, Happiest, Handsomest, Best Born, Best Bred, Best Instructed Men On Earth And Give Them Special Power For Half An Hour And Because They Are Men They Will Begin To [perform] Badly.
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People Accuse Journalism Of Being Too Personal; But To Me It Has Always Seemed Far Too Impersonal. It Is Charged With Tearing Away The Veils From Private Life; But It Seems To Me To Be Always Dropping Diaphanous But Blinding Veils Between Men And Men. The Yellow Press Is Abused For Exposing Facts Which Are Private; I Wish The Yellow Press Did Anything So Valuable. It Is Exactly The Decisive Individual Touches That It Never Gives; And A Proof Of This Is That After One Has Met A Man A Million Times In The Newspapers It Is Always A Complete Shock And Reversal To Meet Him In Real Life.
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A Businessman Is The Only Man Who Is Forever Apologizing For His Occupation.
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America Has A Genius For The Encouragement Of Fame.
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There Again," Said Syme Irritably, "what Is There Poetical About Being In Revolt? You Might As Well Say That It Is Poetical To Be Sea-sick. Being Sick Is A Revolt. Both Being Sick And Being Rebellious May Be The Wholesome Thing On Certain Desperate Occasions; But I'm Hanged If I Can See Why They Are Poetical...it Is Things Going Right," He Cried, "that Is Poetical! Our Digestions, For Instance, Going Sacredly And Silently Right, That Is The Foundation Of All Poetry...the Most Poetical Thing In The World Is Not Being Sick.
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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.
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People
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Bernard Shaw
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Morality
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On The Third Day The Friends Of Christ Coming At Daybreak To The Place Found The Grave Empty And The Stone Rolled Away. In Varying Ways They Realized The New Wonder; But Even They Hardly Realized That The World Had Died In The Night. What They Were Looking At Was The First Day Of A New Creation, With A New Heaven And A New Earth; And In A Semblance Of The Gardener God Walked Again In The Garden, In The Cool Not Of The Evening But Of The Dawn.
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War
Differences
Way
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Believe
Forgiving
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Government
Hard
Representatives
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Moon
Men
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Long
Mad
Love Means To Love That Which Is Unlovable; Or It Is No Virtue At All.
Love
Mean
Humility
In The Struggle For Existence, It Is Only On Those Who Hang On For Ten Minutes After All Is Hopeless, That Hope Begins To Dawn.
Truth
Struggle
Dawn
Faith Means Believing The Unbelievable.
Hope
Believe
Mean
All Men Are Ordinary Men; The Extraordinary Men Are Those Who Know It.
Men
Ordinary
Knows
The Most Extraordinary Thing In The World Is An Ordinary Man And An Ordinary Woman And Their Ordinary Children.
Family
Christian
Prayer
I Think The Oddest Thing About The Advanced People Is That, While They Are Always Talking About Things As Problems, They Have Hardly Any Notion Of What A Real Problem Is.
Real
Thinking
Talking
Nothing Is So Remote From Us As The Thing Which Is Not Old Enough To Be History And Not New Enough To Be News.
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Enough
True Contentment Is A Thing As Active As Agriculture. It Is The Power Of Getting Out Of Any Situation All That There Is In It. It Is Arduous And It Is Rare.
Happiness
Power
Agriculture
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Lessons
Fairytale
Fairy Tale
For My Part, I Should Be Inclined To Suggest That The Chief Object Of Education Should Be To Restore Simplicity. If You Like To Put It So, The Chief Object Of Education Is Not To Learn Things; Nay, The Chief Object Of Education Is To Unlearn Things.
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Chiefs
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Pessimism
Conventions
I Should Say That Psycho-analysis Was Confession Without Absolution.
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Psycho
Confession
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Men
Mad
May
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Devil
Four
Wherever There Is Animal Worship, There Is Human Sacrifice.
Sacrifice
Animal
Worship
The Truth Is, Of Course, That The Curtness Of The Ten Commandments Is An Evidence, Not Of The Gloom And Narrowness Of A Religion, But, On The Contrary, Of Its Liberality And Humanity. It Is Shorter To State The Things Forbidden Than The Things Permitted; Precisely Because Most Things Are Permitted, And Only A Few Things Are Forbidden.
Christian
Humanity
Truth Is
When Belief In God Becomes Difficult, The Tendency Is To Turn Away From Him; But In Heaven's Name To What?
Names
Heaven
Belief
The Most Valuable Book We Can Read, About Countries We Have Visited, Is That Which Recalls To Us Something That We Did Notice, But Did Not Notice That We Noticed.
Country
Book
Valuable
Science Boasts Of The Distance Of Its Stars; Of The Terrific Remoteness Of The Things Of Which It Has To Speak. But Poetry And Religion Always Insist Upon The Proximity, The Almost Menacing Closeness Of The Things With Which They Are Concerned. Always The Kingdom Of Heaven Is "at Hand."
Stars
Distance
Science
The Worst Moment For An Atheist Is When He Feels A Profound Sense Of Gratitude And Has No One To Thank.
Gratitude
Atheist
Worst Moments
Virtue Is Not The Absence Of Vices Or The Avoidance Of Moral Dangers; Virtue Is A Vivid And Separate Thing, Like Pain Or A Particular Smell.
Pain
Smell
Vices
Men May Keep A Sort Of Level Of Good, But No Man Has Ever Been Able To Keep On One Level Of Evil.
Men
Evil
Levels
Very Few People In The World Would Care To Listen To The Real Defense Of Their Own Characters. The Real Defense, The Defense Which Belongs To The Day Of Judgment, Would Make Such Damaging Admissions, Would Clear Away So Many Artificial Virtues, Would Tell Such Tragedies Of Weakness And Failure, That A Man Would Sooner Be Misunderstood And Censured By The World Than Exposed To That Awful And Merciless Eulogy.
Real
Character
Men
Thinking Means Connecting Things, And Stops If They Cannot Be Connected.
Mean
Thinking
Connected
[v]ariety Of Climate Should Always Go With Stability Of Abode.... An Englishman’s House Is Not Only His Castle; It Is His Fairy Castle. Clouds And Colours Of Every Varied Dawn And Eve Are Perpetually Touching And Turning It From Clay To Gold, Or From Gold To Ivory. There Is A Line Of Woodland Beyond A Corner Of My Garden Which Is Literally Different On Every One Of The Three Hundred And Sixty-five Days. Sometimes It Seems As Near As A Hedge, And Sometimes As Far As A Faint And Fiery Evening Cloud.
Garden
Weather
Ivory
Men Can Construct A Science With Very Few Instruments, Or With Very Plain Instruments; But No One On Earth Could Construct A Science With Unreliable Instruments. A Man Might Work Out The Whole Of Mathematics With A Handful Of Pebbles, But Not With A Handful Of Clay Which Was Always Falling Apart Into New Fragments, And Falling Together Into New Combinations. A Man Might Measure Heaven And Earth With A Reed, But Not With A Growing Reed.
Fall
Men
Work Out
You Cannot Love A Thing Without Wanting To Fight For It.
Love
Fighting
Fighting On
Liberty Has Produced Scepticism, And Scepticism Has Destroyed Liberty. The Lovers Of Liberty Thought They Were Leaving It Unlimited, When They Were Only Leaving It Undefined. They Thought They Were Only Leaving It Undefined, When They Were Really Leaving It Undefended.
Leaving
Liberty
Lovers
Aristocracy: Government By The Badly Educated.
Government
Aristocracy
Educated
Variability Is One Of The Virtues Of A Woman. It Avoids The Crude Requirement Of Polygamy. So Long As You Have One Good Wife You Are Sure To Have A Spiritual Harem".
Spiritual
Women
Long
I Would Maintain That Thanks Are The Highest Form Of Thought; And That Gratitude Is Happiness Doubled By Wonder.
Leadership
Thank You
Teacher
America Is The Only Country Ever Founded On A Creed.
Country
America
Creeds
The One Created Thing Which We Cannot Look At Is The One Thing In The Light Of Which We Look At Everything.
Light
Looks
One Thing
[buddhism And Christianity] Are In One Sense Parallel And Equal; As A Mound And A Hollow, As A Valley And A Hill. There Is A Sense In Which That Sublime Despair Is The Only Alternative To That Divine Audacity. It Is Even True That The Truly Spiritual And Intellectual Man Sees It As Sort Of Dilemma; A Very Hard And Terrible Choice. There Is Little Else On Earth That Can Compare With These For Completeness. And He Who Does Not Climb The Mountain Of Christ Does Indeed Fall Into The Abyss Of Buddha.
Spiritual
Fall
Buddhism
Man Is An Exception, Whatever Else He Is. If He Is Not The Image Of God, Then He Is A Disease Of The Dust. If It Is Not True That A Divine Being Fell, Then We Can Only Say That One Of The Animals Went Entirely Off Its Head.
God
Animal
Men
Men Always Talk About The Most Important Things To Perfect Strangers.
Relationship
Uncles
Men
One Of The Deepest And Strangest Of All Human Moods Is The Mood Which Will Suddenly Strike Us Perhaps In A Garden At Night, Or Deep In Sloping Meadows, The Feeling That Every Flower And Leaf Has Just Uttered Something Stupendously Direct And Important, And That We Have By A Prodigy Of Imbecility Not Heard Or Understood It. There Is A Certain Poetic Value, And That A Genuine One, In This Sense Of Having Missed The Full Meaning Of Things. There Is Beauty, Not Only In Wisdom, But In This Dazed And Dramatic Ignorance.
Flower
Ignorance
Knowledge
You Say Grace Before Meals. All Right. But I Say Grace Before The Concert And The Opera, And Grace Before The Play And Pantomime, And Grace Before I Open A Book, And Grace Before Sketching, Painting, Swimming, Fencing, Boxing, Walking, Playing, Dancing And Grace Before I Dip The Pen In The Ink.
Inspirational
Thanksgiving
Thankful
Education Is The Period During Which You Are Being Instructed By Somebody You Do Not Know, About Something You Do Not Want To Know.
Education
Teaching
School
A Small Artist Is Content With Art; A Great Artist Is Content With Nothing Except Everything.
Art
Contentment
Artist
The Life Of A Thinking Man Will Probably Be Divided Into Two Parts -- The First In Which He Desires To Exterminate Modern Thinkers, And The Second In Which He Desires To Watch Them Exterminating Each Other. ... Suppose, For Instance, There Is An Old Story And A New Skeptic Who Is Skeptical Of The Story. We Have Only To Wait A Little While For A Yet Newer Skeptic Who Is Skeptical Of The Skeptic. He Will Probably Find The Old Notion Actually A Help In His New Notion. This Process Is An Abstract Truth Applying To Anything, Apart From Agreement Or Disagreement.
Truth
Men
Thinking
The Modern Mind Will Accept Nothing On Authority, But Will Accept Anything On No Authority. Say That The Bible Or The Pope Says So And It Will Be Dismissed Without Further Examination. But Preface Your Remark With "i Think I Heard Somewhere," Or, Try But Fail To Remember The Name Of Some Professor Who Might Have Said "such-and-such," And It Will Be Immediately Accepted As An Unshakable Fact.
Thinking
Names
Catholic
Fairy Tales Are More Than True.
Dragons
Fairy Stories
Fairy Tale
In Real Life The People Who Are Most Bigoted Are The People Who Have No Convictions At All.
Racism
People
Conviction
Reason Is Always A Kind Of Brute Force; Those Who Appeal To The Head Rather Than The Heart, However Pallid And Polite, Are Necessarily Men Of Violence. We Speak Of 'touching' A Man's Heart, But We Can Do Nothing To His Head But Hit It.
Heart
Men
Touching
It Seems To Me,' Said The Other, 'that You Are Simply Seeking A Pretext To Insult The Marquis.' By George!' Said Syme Facing Round And Looking At Him, 'what A Clever Chap You Are!
Clever
Insult
Said
The Sane Man Knows That He Has A Touch Of The Beast, A Touch Of The Devil, A Touch Of The Saint, A Touch Of The Citizen. Nay, The Really Sane Man Knows That He Has A Touch Of The Madman.
Men
Devil
Saint
The Old Assumption Of The Approximate Impossibility Of War Really Rested On A Similar Assumption About The Impossibility Of Evil-and Especially Of Evil In High Places.
War
Evil
Assumption
Such Professions As The Soldier And The Lawyer ... Give Ample Opportunity For Crimes But Not Much For Mere Illusions. ... If You Have Lost A Battle You Cannot Believe You Have Won It; If Your Client Is Hanged You Cannot Pretend That You Have Gotten Him Off.
Believe
Opportunity
Giving
Any One Of The Strange Laws We Suffer Is A Compromise Between A Fad And A Vested Interest.
Law
Suffering
Fads
A Man Cannot Have The Energy To Produce Good Art Without Having The Energy To Wish To Pass Beyond It.
Art
Men
Wish
The Outer Ring Of Christianity Is A Rigid Guard Of Ethical Abnegations And Professional Priests; But Inside That Inhuman Guard You Will Find The Old Human Life Dancing Like Children And Drinking Wine Like Men; For Christianity Is The Only Frame For Pagan Freedom. But In The Modern Philosophy The Case Is Opposite; It Is Its Outer Ring That Is Obviously Artistic And Emancipated; Its Despair Is Within.
Children
Philosophy
Drinking
The Difficulty Of Explaining ‘why I Am A Catholic’ Is That There Are Ten Thousand Reasons All Amounting To One Reason: That Catholicism Is True.
Catholic
Reason
Explaining
Passion Makes Every Detail Important.
Passion
Important
Details
For They (capitalists) Hold As Their Chief Heresy, In A Coarser Form, The Fundamental Falsehood That Things Are Not Made To Be Used But Made To Be Sold. All The Collapse Of Their Commercial System In Their Own Time Has Been Due To That Fallacy Of Forcing Things On A Market Where There Was No Market; Of Continually Increasing The Power Of Supply Without Increasing The Power Of Demand; Of Briefly, Of Always Considering The Man Who Sells The Potato And Never Considering The Man Who Eats It.
Men
Demand
Potatoes
Every Act Of Will Is An Act Of Self-limitation. To Desire Action Is To Desire Limitation. In That Sense, Every Act Is An Act Of Self-sacrifice. When You Choose Anything, You Reject Everything Else.
Sacrifice
Self
Desire
I Will Go Forth As A Real Outlaw," He Said, "and As Men Do Robbery On The Highway I Will Do Right On The Highway; And It Will Be Counted A Wilder Crime.
Real
Men
Crime
You Can Only Find Truth With Logic If You Have Already Found Truth Without It.
Spiritual
Witty
Truth
It Might Reasonably Be Maintained That The True Object Of All Human Life Is Play. Earth Is A Task Garden; Heaven Is A Playground. To Be At Last In Such Secure Innocence That One Can Juggle With The Universe And The Stars, To Be So Good That One Can Treat Everything As A Joke - That May Be, Perhaps, The Real End And Final Holiday Of Human Souls.
Faith
Stars
Real
We Are All Ordinary People. And It's The Extraordinary People Who Know It.
People
Ordinary
Knows
The Danger Of Loss Of Faith In God Is Not That One Will Believe In Nothing, But Rather That One Will Believe In Anything.
Believe
Loss
Political
Busy Editors Cannot Be Expected To Put On Their Posters, "mr. Wilkinson Still Safe," Or "mr. Jones, Of Worthing, Not Dead Yet." They Cannot Announce The Happiness Of Mankind At All. They Cannot Describe All The Forks That Are Not Stolen, Or All The Marriages That Are Not Judiciously Dissolved. Hence The Complex Picture They Give Of Life Is Of Necessity Fallacious; They Can Only Represent What Is Unusual.
Editors
Giving
Safe
No Man Can Be Merry Unless He Is Serious.
Men
Serious
Merry
The Modern World Is A Crowd Of Very Rapid Racing Cars All Brought To A Standstill And Stuck In A Block Of Traffic.
Block
Car
Racing
The Modern City Is Ugly Not Because It Is A City But Because It Is Not Enough Of A City, Because It Is A Jungle, Because It Is Confused And Anarchic, And Surging With Selfish And Materialistic Energies.
Selfish
Confused
Cities
I've Been To Every Park In Every City And Not Seen A Statue To A Committee.
Cities
Parks
Committees
Those Thinkers Who Cannot Believe In Any Gods Often Assert That The Love Of Humanity Would Be In Itself Sufficient For Them; And So, Perhaps, It Would, If They Had It.
Love
God
Believe
There Is Always In The Healthy Mind An Obscure Prompting That Religion Teaches Us Rather To Dig Than To Climb; That If We Could Once Understand The Common Clay Of Earth We Should Understand Everything. Similarly, We Have The Sentiment That If We Could Destroy Custom At A Blow And See The Stars As A Child Sees Them, We Should Need No Other Apocalypse. This Is The Great Truth Which Has Always Lain At The Back Of Baby-worship, And Which Will Support It To The End.
Baby
Stars
Children
We Have Not Made Cricket And Football [soccer] Professional Because Of Any Astonishing Avarice Or New Vulgarity. We Have Made Them Professional Because We Would Have Them Perfect. We Have Dedicated Men To Them As To Some God Of Inhuman Excellence. We Care More For Football Than For The Fun Of Playing Football.
Soccer
Sports
Football
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