A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims permanence, like a… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The old idea that the joke was not good enough for the company has been superseded by the new aristocratic idea that… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
A man cannot be wise enough to be a great artist without being wise enough to wish to be a philosopher. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
If we want to give poor people soap we must set out deliberately to give them luxuries. If we will not make… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Now it has appeared to me unfair that humanity should be engaged perpetually in calling all those things bad which have been… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Nothing is so remote from us as the thing which is not old enough to be history and not new enough to… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
So far as a man may be proud of a religion rooted in humility, I am very proud of my religion; I… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Whenever you remove any fence, always pause long enough to ask why it was put there in the first place. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
All but the hard hearted man must be torn with pity for this pathetic dilemma of the rich man, who has to… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
What a glorious garden of wonders the lights of Broadway would be to anyone lucky enough to be unable to read. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
It's not that we don't have enough scoundrels to curse; it's that we don't have enough good men to curse them. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
If an editor can only make people angry enough, they will write half his newspaper for him for nothing. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The grinding power of the plain words of the Gospel story is like the power of mill-stones, and those who can read… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The great ideals of the past failed not by being outlived (which must mean over-lived), but by not being lived enough. Mankind… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
If our caricaturists do not hate their enemies, it is not because they are too big to hate them, but because their… — 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
