Gilbert K. Chesterton
It is as healthy to enjoy sentiment as to enjoy jam.
Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young.
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.
Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.
Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.
A businessman is the only man who is forever apologizing for his occupation.
Some men never feel small, but these are the few men who are.
With any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain healthy humiliation.
The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.
It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.
The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.
There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.
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.
Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal man does not amaze.
A radical generally meant a man who thought he could somehow pull up the root without affecting the flower. A conservative generally meant a man who wanted to conserve everything except his own reason for conserving anything.
Large organization is loose organization. Nay, it would be almost as true to say that organization is always disorganization.
Being 'contented' ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and resigned to living in it; it ought to mean appreciating all there is in such a position.
Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.
The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them.
Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.
The whole order of things is as outrageous as any miracle which could presume to violate it.
An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.
If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.
There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.
When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.
The present condition of fame is merely fashion.
There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.
The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.
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.
A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.
The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything.
The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men.
Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf; is better than a whole loaf.
And they that rule in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they have no graves as yet.
A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over... is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.
Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.
Journalism largely consists of saying 'Lord Jones is Dead' to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.
New roads; new ruts.
The problem of disbelieving in God is not that a man ends up believing nothing. Alas, it is much worse. He ends up believing anything.Collection: Believe
The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.Collection: Business
Moral issues are always terribly complex for someone without principles.Collection: Issues
You'll never find the solution if you don't see the problem.Collection: Problem
Tolerance is the virtue of people who do not believe in anything.Collection: Believe
Jesus promised his disciples three things—that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in constant trouble.Collection: Jesus
Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.Collection: Fall
To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.Collection: Love
God is like the sun; you cannot look at it, but without it you cannot look at anything else.Collection: Inspirational