Life is serious all the time, but living cannot be. You may have all the solemnity you wish in your neckties, but… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The sceptic ultimately undermines democracy (1) because he can see no significance in death and such things of a literal equality; (2)… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
There are two kinds of paradoxes. They are not so much the good and the bad, nor even the true and the… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Were Patrick Henry to return to earth and look around on the vast economic order of the day, he might revise his… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
To mix science up with philosophy is only to produce a philosophy that has lost all its ideal value and a science… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
What life and death may be to a turkey is not my business; but the soul of Scrooge and the body of… — 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