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The Whole Object Of Travel Is Not To Set Foot On Foreign Land; It Is At Last To Set Foot On One's Own Country As A Foreign Land.
-Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The Whole Object Of

Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The Whole Object Of Travel Is Not To Set Foot On Foreign Land; It Is At Last To Set Foot On One's Own Country As A Foreign Land.

Understanding the Quote: "the whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign..."

This quote by Gilbert K. Chesterton reflects deeply on the theme of country. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Country, Travel, Adventure, 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 country and travel. 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
Country
Travel
Adventure
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An Artist Will Betray Himself By Some Sort Of Sincerity.
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With All That We Hear Of American Hustle And Hurry, It Is Rather Strange That Americans Seem To Like To Linger On Longer Words.
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Modern Masters Of Science Are Much Impressed With The Need Of Beginning All Inquiry With A Fact. The Ancient Masters Of Religion Were Quite Equally Impressed With That Necessity. They Began With The Fact Of Sin-a Fact As Practical As Potatoes. Whether Or Not Man Could Be Washed In Miraculous Waters, There Was No Doubt At Any Rate That He Wanted Washing.
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The Function Of The Imagination Is Not To Make Strange Things Settled, So Much As To Make Settled Things Strange.
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No Sceptical Philosopher Can Ask Any Questions That May Not Equally Be Asked By A Tired Child On A Hot Afternoon.
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Catholic Doctrine And Discipline May Be Walls; But They Are The Walls Of A Playground.
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Ingratitude Is Surely The Chief Of The Intellectual Sins Of Man. He Takes His Political Benefits For Granted, Just As He Takes The Skies And The Seasons For Granted.
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Real Development Is Not Leaving Things Behind, As On A Road, But Drawing Life From Them, As From A Root.
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It Is Not Only Possible To Say A Great Deal In Praise Of Play; It Is Really Possible To Say The Highest Things In Praise Of It. It Might Reasonably Be Maintained That The True Object Of All Human Life Is Play. Earth Is A Task Garden; Heaven Is A Playground.
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Men In England Are Ruled, At This Minute By The Clock, By Brutes Who Refuse Them Bread, By Liars Who Refuse Them News, And By Fools Who Cannot Govern, And Therefore Wish To Enslave.
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I Was Planning To Go Into Architecture. But When I Arrived, Architecture Was Filled Up. Acting Was Right Next To It, So I Signed Up For Acting Instead.
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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.
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No Man Must Be Superior To The Things That Are Common To Men.... Not Only Are We All In The Same Boat, But We Are All Seasick.
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Retirement
Teaching
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Subjects
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Way
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Falling Down
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Strange
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Eye
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Hands
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Self
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Authority
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Christmas
Gratitude
Taken
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Two
Firsts
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Decadence
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Men
Criticism
Green
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Missing
Links
Knows
It Is A Mathematical Fact That If A Line Be Not Perfectly Directed Towards A Point, It Will Actually Go Further Away From It As It Comes Nearer To It.
Lines
Facts
Mathematical
It Is Assumed That The Skeptic Has No Bias; Whereas He Has A Very Obvious Bias In Favour Of Skepticism.
Favour
Obvious
Skepticism
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Madness
Method
The Person Who Is Really In Revolt Is The Optimist, Who Generally Lives And Dies In A Desperate And Suicidal Effort To Persuade Other People How Good They Are.
Suicidal
People
Effort
Islam Was Something Like A Christian Heresy. The Early Heresies Had Been Full Of Mad Reversals And Evasions Of The Incarnation, Rescuing Their Jesus From The Reality Of His Body Even At The Expense Of The Sincerity Of His Soul.
Christian
Jesus
Reality
When People Begin To Ignore Human Dignity, It Will Not Be Long Before They Begin To Ignore Human Rights.
Rights
Long
People
America Is The Only Country Ever Founded On A Creed.
Country
America
Creeds
The More We Are Proud That The Bethlehem Story Is Plain Enough To Be Understood By The Shepherds, And Almost By The Sheep, The More Do We Let Ourselves Go, In Dark And Gorgeous Imaginative Frescoes Or Pageants About The Mystery And Majesty Of The Three Magian Kings.
Christmas
Kings
Dark
There Are Two Kinds Of Peacemakers In The Modern World; And They Are Both, Though In Various Ways, A Nuisance. The First Peacemaker Is The Man Who Goes About Saying That He Agrees With Everybody. He Confuses Everybody. The Second Peacemaker Is The Man Who Goes About Saying That Everybody Agrees With Him. He Enrages Everybody. Between The Two Of Them They Produce A Hundred Times More Disputes And Distractions Than We Poor Pugnacious People Would Ever Have Thought Of In Our Lives.
Men
Two
People
Do Not Be So Open-minded That Your Brains Fall Out.
Fall
Brain
Open Minded
There Is One Thing Which Gives Radiance To Everything. It Is The Idea Of Something Around The Corner.
Hope
Ideas
Giving
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Graduation
Hope
Carpe Diem
Our Civilization Has Decided That Determining The Guilt Or Innocence Of Men Is A Thing Too Important To Be Trusted To Trained Men. When It Wants A Library Catalogued, Or The Solar System Discovered, Or Any Trifle Of That Kind, It Uses Up Its Specialists. But When It Wishes Anything Done Which Is Really Serious, It Collects Twelve Of The Ordinary Men Standing Round. The Same Thing Was Done, If I Remember Right, By The Founder Of Christianity.
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Humorous
Men
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Beer
Names
Cider
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Business
Home
Imagination
...it's Natural To Believe In The Supernatural. It Never Feels Natural To Accept Only Natural Things.
Believe
Natural
Accepting
Whatever Else May Be Said Of Man, This One Thing Is Clear: He Is Not What He Is Capable Of Being.
Men
May
Said
Unfortunately, 19th-century Scientists Were Just As Ready To Jump To The Conclusion That Any Guess About Nature Was An Obvious Fact, As Were 17th-century Sectarians To Jump To The Conclusion That Any Guess About Scripture Was The Obvious Explanation . . . . And This Clumsy Collision Of Two Very Impatient Forms Of Ignorance Was Known As The Quarrel Of Science And Religion.
Ignorance
Two
Scripture
There Is Nothing Harder To Learn Than Painting And Nothing Which Most People Take Less Trouble About Learning.
Education
People
Painting
I Suppose Every One Must Have Reflected How Primeval And How Poetical Are The Things That One Carries In One's Pocket; The Pocket-knife, For Instance, The Type Of All Human Tools, The Infant Of The Sword. Once I Planned To Write A Book Of Poems Entirely About Things In My Pockets. But I Found It Would Be Too Long; And The Age Of The Great Epics Is Past.
Book
Writing
Epic
If You Attempt An Actual Argument With A Modern Paper Of Opposite Politics, You Will Have No Answer Except Slanging Or Silence.
Opposites
Silence
Answers
People Seem To Fight About Things Very Unsuitable For Fighting. They Make A Frightful Noise In Support Of Very Quiet Things. They Knock Each Other About In The Name Of Very Fragile Things.
Anger
Fighting
Names
In Truth, There Are Only Two Kinds Of People; Those Who Accept Dogma And Know It, And Those Who Accept Dogma And Don't Know It.
Two
People
Dogma
Just The Other Day In The Underground I Enjoyed The Pleasure Of Offering My Seat To Three Ladies.
Food
Offering
Three
...there Is In Life An Element Of Elfin Coincidence Which People Reckoning On The Prosaic May Perpetually Miss. As It Has Been Well Expressed In The Paradox Of Poe, Wisdom Should Reason On The Unforeseen.
Wisdom
People
Missing
Boyhood Is A Most Complex And Incomprehensible Thing. Even When One Has Been Through It, One Does Not Understand What It Was. A Man Can Never Quite Understand A Boy, Even When He Has Been The Boy.
Son
Men
Boys
There Is A Road From The Eye To The Heart That Does Not Go Through The Intellect. Men Do Not Quarrel About The Meaning Of Sunsets; They Never Dispute That The Hawthorn Says The Best And Wittiest Thing About The Spring.
Spring
Sunset
Eye
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.
Art
Humility
Size
Religious Liberty Might Be Supposed To Mean That Everybody Is Free To Discuss Religion. In Practice It Means That Hardly Anybody Is Allowed To Mention It.
Religious
Mean
Practice
Dogma Does Not Mean The Absence Of Thought, But The End Of Thought.
Mean
Doe
Dogma
Nothing Can Ever Overcome That One Enormous Sex (female) Superiority That Even The Male Child Is Born Closer To His Mother Than To His Father.
Mother
Sex
Children
A Good Civilisation Spreads Over Us Freely Like A Tree, Varying And Yielding Because It Is Alive. A Bad Civilisation Stands Up And Sticks Out Above Us Like An Umbrella-artificial, Mathematical In Shape; Not Merely Universal, But Uniform.
Civilization
Tree
Alive
Every Man Is Important If He Loses His Life;and Every Man Is Funny If He Loses His Hat And Has To Run After It.
Running
Men
Important
A Cosmic Philosophy Is Not Constructed To Fit A Man; A Cosmic Philosophy Is Constructed To Fit A Cosmos. A Man Can No More Possess A Private Religion Than He Can Possess A Private Sun And Moon.
Philosophy
Moon
Men
People Who Make History Know Nothing About History. You Can See That In The Sort Of History They Make.
People
Knows
In A World Flagrant With The Failures Of Civilization, What Is There Particularly Immortal About Our Own?
Failure
Civilization
World
The Chief Object Of Education Is Not To Learn Things But To Unlearn Things.
Education
Learning
Justice
Even The Moon Is Only Poetical Because There Is A Man In The Moon.
Moon
Men
Man In The Moon
Playing As Children Means Playing Is The Most Serious Thing In The World.
Baby
Children
Mean
I Represent The Jolly Mass Of Mankind. I Am The Happy And Reckless Christian.
Christian
Reckless
Mass
The Purpose Of Compulsory Education Is To Deprive The Common People Of Their Commonsense.
Education
School
People
'my Country, Right Or Wrong' Is A Thing No Patriot Would Ever Think Of Saying Except In A Desperate Case. It Is Like Saying 'my Mother, Drunk Or Sober.'
Mother
Country
Patriotic
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.
Art
Men
Thinking
People In High Life Are Hardened To The Wants And Distresses Of Mankind As Surgeons Are To Their Bodily Pains.
Pain
People
Want
In Matters Of Truth The Fact That You Don't Want To Publish Something Is, Nine Times Out Of Ten, A Proof That You Ought To Publish It.
Writing
Want
Matter
A Man Who Says That No Patriot Should Attack The Boer War Until It Is Over Is Not Worth Answering Intelligently; He Is Saying That No Good Son Should Warn His Mother Off A Cliff Until She Has Fallen Over It.
Mother
Peace
War
Once Remove The Old Arena Of Theological Quarrels, And You Will Throw Open The Whole World To The Most Horrible, The Most Hopeless, The Most Endless, The Most Truly Interminable Quarrels; The Untheological Quarrels.
World
Arena
Hopeless
The Act Of Defending Any Of The Cardinal Virtues Has Today All The Exhilaration Of A Vice.
Vices
Today
Exhilaration
The Oligarchic Character Of The Modern English Commonwealth Does Not Rest, Like Many Oligarchies, On The Cruelty Of The Rich To The Poor. It Does Not Even Rest On The Kindness Of The Rich To The Poor. It Rests On The Perennial And Unfailing Kindness Of The Poor To The Rich.
Kindness
Character
Doe
The Martyr Endured Tortures To Affirm His Belief In Truth But He Never Asserted His Disbelief In Torture.
Belief
Torture
Martyr
There Is Something To Be Said For Every Error; But, Whatever May Be Said For It, The Most Important Thing To Be Said About It Is That It Is Erroneous.
Mistake
Errors
Important
There Should Be A Burnished Tablet Let Into The Ground On The Spot Where Some Courageous Man First Ate Stilton Cheese, And Survived.
Courage
Men
Tablets
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
Whether A Man Chooses To Tell The Truth In Long Sentences Or Short Jokes Is A Problem Analogous To Whether He Chooses To Tell The Truth In French Or In German.
Men
Long
Problem
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.
Art
Stars
Tree
Modern Intelligence Won't Accept Anything On Authority. But It Will Accept Anything Without Authority.
Modern
Authority
Accepting
A Strange Fanaticism Fills Our Time: The Fanatical Hatred Of Morality, Especially Of Christian Morality.
Christian
Hatred
Morality
Every One On This Earth Should Believe, Amid Whatever Madness Or Moral Failure, That His Life And Temperament Have Some Object On The Earth. Every One On The Earth Should Believe That He Has Something To Give To The World Which Cannot Otherwise Be Given.
Believe
Giving
World
For The Only Courage Worth Calling Courage Must Necessarily Mean That The Soul Passes A Breaking Point And Does Not Break.
Mean
Point Break
Soul
If We Are Bound To Improve, We Need Not Trouble To Improve. The Pure Doctrine Of Progress Is The Best Of All Reasons For Not Being A Progressive.
Progress
Doctrine
Needs
So Far As A Man May Be Proud Of A Religion Rooted In Humility, I Am Very Proud Of My Religion; I Am Especially Proud Of Those Parts Of It That Are Most Commonly Called Superstition. I Am Proud Of Being Fettered By Antiquated Dogmas And Enslaved By Dead Creeds (as My Journalistic Friends Repeat With So Much Pertinacity), For I Know Very Well That It Is The Heretical Creeds That Are Dead, And That It Is Only The Reasonable Dogma That Lives Long Enough To Be Called Antiquated.
Humility
Men
Long
Every Politician Is Emphatically A Promising Politician.
Politician
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.
Art
Philosophy
Reality
The Wine They Drink In Paradise They Make In Haute Lorraine.
Wine
Paradise
Drink
They Said That I Should Lose My Ideals And Begin To Believe In The Methods Of Practical Politicians. Now, I Have Not Lost My Ideals In The Least; My Faith In Fundamentals Is Exactly What It Always Was. What I Have Lost Is My Childlike Faith In Practical Politics.
Believe
Fundamentals
Politician
That Young Man With The Long, Auburn Hair And The Impudent Face - That Young Man Was Not Really A Poet; But Surely He Was A Poem.
Men
Hair
Long
And When It Rains On Your Parade, Look Up Rather Than Down. Without The Rain, There Would Be No Rainbow.
Inspirational
Happiness
Rain
Every True Artist Feels That He Is Touching Transcendental Truths; That His Images Are Shadows Of Things Seen Through The Veil.
Artist
Touching
Shadow
Religious Unity Can Look Like A Carnival And Religious Liberty Can Look Like A Funeral.
Religious
Funeral
Unity
The Great Ideals Of The Past Failed Not By Being Outlived (which Must Mean Over-lived), But By Not Being Lived Enough. Mankind Has Not Passed Through The Middle Ages. Rather Mankind Has Retreated From The Middle Ages In Reaction And Rout. The Christian Ideal Has Not Been Tried And Found Wanting. It Has Been Found Difficult And Left Untried.
Christian
Mean
Past
Atheism Is Too Theological.
Atheism
Theological
Comradeship Is Obvious And Universal And Open; But It Is Only One Kind Of Affection; It Has Characteristics That Would Destroy Any Other Kind. Anyone Who Has Known True Comradeship In A Club Or In A Regiment, Knows That It Is Impersonal.
Clubs
Kind
Affection
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.
Simplicity
Should
Chiefs
The Modern World Is Full Of The Old Christian Virtues Gone Mad. The Virtues Have Gone Mad Because They Have Been Isolated From Each Other And Are Wandering Alone. Thus Some Scientists Care For Truth; And Their Truth Is Pitiless. Thus Some Humanitarians Only Care For Pity; And Their Pity (i Am Sorry To Say) Is Often Untruthful.
Christian
Sorry
Mad
For When We Cease To Worship God, We Do Not Worship Nothing, We Worship Anything.
Atheist
Religion
Atheism
Hope Means Hoping When Things Are Hopeless, Or It Is No Virtue At All. And Faith Means Believing The Incredible, Or It Is No Virtue At All.
Faith
Believe
Inspiration
The Center Of Every Man's Existence Is A Dream. Death, Disease, Insanity, Are Merely Material Accidents, Like A Toothache Or A Twisted Ankle. That These Brutal Forces Always Besiege And Often Capture The Citadel Does Not Prove That They Are The Citadel.
Dream
Men
Insanity
The Ignorant Pronounce It Frood To Cavil Or Applaud The Well-informed Pronounce It Froyd But I Pronounce It Fraud.
Ignorant
Fraud
Wells
The Professional Soldier Gains More And More Power As The General Courage Of A Community Declines.
Courage
Community
Soldier
The Power Which Makes A Man Able To Entertain A Good Impulse Is The Same As That Which Enables Him To Make A Good Gun; It Is Imagination.
Men
Gun
Power
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