“Estates are sometimes held by foolish forms, the breaking of a stick or the payment of a peppercorn. I was willing to… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“My first and last philosophy ... I learnt in the nursery... The things I believed then, the things I believe most now,… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Just as we all like love tales because there is an instinct of sex, we all like astonishing tales because they touch… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“There are some refusals which, though they may be done what is called conscientiously, yet carry so much of their whole horror… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Can you not see," I said, "that fairy tales in their essence are quite solid and straightforward; but that this everlasting fiction… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Fairy tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“If our life is ever really as beautiful as a fairy tale, we shall have to remember that all the beauty of… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“We are in this fairyland on sufferance; it is not for us to quarrel with the conditions under which we enjoy this… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“I never use paradox. The statements I make are wearisome and obvious common sense. I have even been driven to the tedium of reading… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Nothing, again, could be more prosaic and impenetrable than the domestic energies of Miss Diana Duke. But Innocent had somehow blundered on the discovery… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The mass of men have been forced to be gay about the little things, but sad about the big ones. Nevertheless (I offer my… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“ask yourself how many people you have met who grumbled at a thing as incurable, and how many who attacked it as curable? How… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Internationalism is in any case hostile to democracy….The only purely popular government is local, and founded on local knowledge. The citizens can rule the… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“There was a short railway official travelling up to the terminus, three fairly short market-gardeners picked up two stations afterwards, one very short widow… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.” — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Man, by a blind instinct, knew that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first. The authority of priests to absolve,… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
