The decay of society is praised by artists as the decay of a corpse is praised by worms. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Savages and modern artists are alike strangely driven to create something uglier than themselves. but the artists find it harder. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The beautification of the world is not a work of nature, but a work of art, then it involves an artist. — 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… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle. Upon this… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
America is the only nation in the world that is founded on creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
And all over the world, the old literature, the popular literature, is the same. It consists of very dignified sorrow and very… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
If, therefore, nonsense is really to be the literature of the future, it must have its own version of the Cosmos to… — 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 are generally honest. Complete solemnity is almost always dishonest. The writer of the snippet merely refers to a frivolous and fugitive fact in a frivolous and fugitive way. The writer of the leading article has to… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share
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 nail in his boot that prevented him from going on. For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which made him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share
Plato was only a Bernard Shaw who unfortunately made his jokes in Greek. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
