Gilbert K. Chesterton
The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.Collection: Courage
Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.Collection: Veterans
The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.Collection: New
Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.Collection: Courage
All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.Collection: Alone
It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.Collection: Religion
The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.Collection: Love
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.Collection: Truth
Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich.Collection: Science
A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.Collection: Intelligence
The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind.Collection: Health
All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.Collection: Poetry
Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.Collection: Marriage
The word 'good' has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.Collection: Good
People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.Collection: History
There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.Collection: Imagination
One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.Collection: Great
The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense.Collection: Education
Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged.Collection: Knowledge
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.Collection: Success
The only defensible war is a war of defense.Collection: War
Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.Collection: Education
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.Collection: Architecture
I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.Collection: Thankful
Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.Collection: Health
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.Collection: Travel
When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?Collection: Christmas
All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.Collection: Architecture
Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.Collection: Art
When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.Collection: Thankful
Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalised.Collection: Religion
Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.Collection: Art
Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.Collection: Love
'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.'Collection: Patriotism
Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.Collection: Wisdom
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.Collection: Politics
Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.Collection: Society
No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete.Collection: Education
The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.Collection: Freedom
Women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes.Collection: Men
Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.Collection: Respect
The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.Collection: Poetry
Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.Collection: Religion
Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.Collection: Art
Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.Collection: Happiness
We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbour.Collection: God
Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.Collection: Music
Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.Collection: Government
The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.Collection: Travel
A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching.Collection: Teacher