There have been household gods and household saints and household fairies. I am not sure that there have yet been any factory… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he… — 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
Tradition is only democracy extended through time; it may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Bowing down in blind credulity, as is my custom, before mere authority and the tradition of the elders, superstitiously swallowing a story… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Catholicism is not ritualism; it may in the future be fighting some sort of superstitious and idolatrous exaggeration of ritual. Catholicism is… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
It may be a mere patriotic bias, though I do not think so, but it seems to me that the English aristocracy… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
What is education? Properly speaking, there is no such thing as education. Education is simply the soul of a society as it… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Leaving the complications of the human breakfast-table out of account, in an elemental sense, the egg only exists to produce the chicken.… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The sincere love of books has nothing to do with cleverness or stupidity any more than any other sincere love. It is… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
This is the perpetual and pitiful tragedy of the practical man in practical affairs. He always begins with a flourish of contempt… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
It is cold anarchy to say that all men are to meddle in all men'smarriages. It is cold anarchy to say that… — 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
