A society is in decay, final or transitional, when common sense really becomes uncommon. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
the object of a new year is not that we should have a new year, but rather that we should have a… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Doing nothing is sometimes one of the highest of the duties of man. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Marriage halves our griefs, doubles our joys, and quadruples our expenses — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The simple sense of wonder at the shapes of things, and at their exuberant independence of our intellectual standards and our trivial… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Laughter has something in it common with the ancient words of faith and inspiration; it unfreezes pride and unwinds secrecy; it makes… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible, or it… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
A man will not roll in the snow for a stream of tendency by which all things fulfill the law of their… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
It has always been one of my unclerical sermons to myself, that that remark which Peter made on seeing the vision of… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
It might reasonably be maintained that the true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world.… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The idea of private property universal but private, the idea of families free but still families, of domesticity democratic but still domestic,… — 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
