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
The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life. — 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
The fact is that purification and austerity are even more necessary for the appreciation of life and laughter than for anything else.… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Every one on this earth should believe, amid whatever madness or moral failure, that his life and temperament have some object on… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The Christian pities men because they are dying, and the Buddhist pities them because they are living. The Christian is sorry for… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The full value of this life can only be got by fighting; the violent take it by storm. And if we have… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
How much larger your life would be if you were smaller in it... — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another. — 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
Science is the study of the admitted laws of existence, which cannot prove a universal negative about whether those laws could ever… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The life of a thinking man will probably be divided into two parts -- the first in which he desires to exterminate… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The outer ring of Christianity is a rigid guard of ethical abnegations and professional priests; but inside that inhuman guard you will… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
We are Christians and Catholics not because we worship a key, but because we have passed a door; and felt the wind… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
To say that a man is an idealist is merely to say that he is a man. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Real development is not leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them, as from a root. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
A great city is the place to escape the true drama of provincial life, and find solace in fantasy. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
It has been left to the last Christians, or rather to the first Christians fully committed to blaspheming and denying Christianity, to… — 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
We all feel the riddle of the earth without anyone to point it out. The mystery of life is the plainest part… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The materialist theory of history, that all politics and ethics are the expression of economics, is a very simple fallacy indeed. It… — 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
