The man who says, 'my country right or wrong' is like the man who says, 'my mother drunk or sober' — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The miser is the man who starves himself and everybody else, in order to worship wealth in its dead form, as distinct… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
It is generally the man who is not ready to argue, who is ready to sneer. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Modern nature-worship is all upside down. Trees and fields ought to be the ordinary things; terraces and temples ought to be extraordinary.… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Stick to the man who looks out of the window and tries to understand the world. Keep clear of the man who… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
There is a case for telling the truth; there is a case for avoiding the scandal; but there is no possible defense… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The man of the true religious tradition understands two things: liberty and obedience. The first means knowing what you really want. The… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The lunatic is the man who lives in a small world but thinks it is a large one; he is the man… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world... The reason is obvious. In a large community… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
But pure wit is akin to Puritanism; to the perfect and painful consciousness of the final fact in the universe. Very briefly,… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
We have passed the age of the demagogue, the man who has little to say and says it loud. We have come… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Sir Hiram Maxim is a genuine and typical example of the man of science, romantic, excitable, full of real but somewhat obvious… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Not only is suicide a sin, it is the sin. It is the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The Sentimentalist, roughly speaking, is the man who wants to eat his cake and have it. He has no sense of honor… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
I am myself so exceedingly Nordic, as far as physical constitution is concerned, that I can enjoy almost any weather except what… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
But those dealing in the actual manufacture of mind are dealing in a very explosive material. The material is not merely the… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of ideas. He is acquainted with ideas,… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
At any innocent tea-table we may easily hear a man say, "Life is not worth living." We regard it as we regard… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The whole curse of the last century has been what is called the Swing of the Pendulum; that is, the idea that… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Instead of the machine being a giant to which the man is the pygmy, we must at last reverse the proportions until… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
A child's instinct is almost perfect in the matter of fighting. The child's hero is always the man or boy who defends… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
In the modern conflict between the Smile and the Laugh, I am all in favor of laughing. The recent stage of culture… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The men of the clique live together because they have the same kind of soul, and their narrowness is a narrowness of… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
There are two kinds of charlatan: the man who is called a charlatan, and the man who really is one. The first… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
For they (capitalists) hold as their chief heresy, in a coarser form, the fundamental falsehood that things are not made to be… — 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
