The triangle of truisms, of father, mother and child, cannot be destroyed; it can only destroy those civilizations which disregard it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The true savage is a slave, and is always talking about what he must do; the true civilised man is a free… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
When people talk as if the Crusades were nothing more than an aggressive raid against Islam, they seem to forget in the… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
A good civilisation spreads over us freely like a tree, varying and yielding because it is alive. A bad civilisation stands up… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Our civilization has decided that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
In a world flagrant with the failures of civilization, what is there particularly immortal about our own? — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Over-civilization and barbarism are within an inch of each other. And a mark of both is the power of medicine-men. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Youth is always too serious, and just now it is too serious about frivolity. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things forbidden. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Everyone seems to assume that the unscrupulous parts of journalism will be the frivolous or jocular parts. This is against all ethical experience. Jokes… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
For Scotland has a double dose of the poison called heredity; the sense of blood in the aristocrat, the sense of doom in the… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Faith is always at a disadvantage; it is a perpetually defeated thing which survives all conquerors. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims permanence, like a dogma. People… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The triangle of truisms, of father, mother and child, cannot be destroyed; it can only destroy those civilizations which disregard it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Criticism is only words about words, and of what use are words about such words as these? — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place...The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Plato was only a Bernard Shaw who unfortunately made his jokes in Greek. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
