“Both aristocracy and democracy are human ideals: the one saying that all men are valuable, the other that some men are more… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“In most cases the name is unpoetical, although the fact is poetical. In the case of Smith, the name is so poetical… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“All the terms used in the science books, 'law,' 'necessity,' 'order,' 'tendency,' and so on, are really unintellectual .... The only words… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“My first and last philosophy ... I learnt in the nursery... The things I believed then, the things I believe most now,… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“It is in our own daily life that we are to look for the portents and the prodigies.... Compared with this life,… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“We do wrong to seek peace in Nature; we should rather seek the nobler sort of war; and see all the trees… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The Eugenic optimism seems to partake generally of the nature of that dazzled and confused confidence, so common in private theatricals, that… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“One would think it would be most unwise in a man to be afraid of a skeleton, since Nature has set curious… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption. It is supposed that if… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“This is the mighty and branching tree called mythology which ramifies round the whole world whose remote branches under separate skies bear… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Reason is always reasonable, even in the last limbo, in the lost borderland of all things. I know that people charge the… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“They preferred writing about great men to writing about great hills; but they sat on the great hills to write it. They… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Very deep things in our nature, some dim sense of the dependence of great things upon small, some dark suggestion that the… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“All the jokes about men sitting down on their hats are really theological jokes; they are concerned with the Dual Nature of… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Basil Grant and I were talking one day in what is perhaps the most perfect place for talking on earth--the top of… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Of course sane people always thought the aim of marriage was the procreation of children to the glory of God or according… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“And the beasts of the earth and the birds looked down, In a wild solemnity, On a stranger sight than a sylph… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone has felt that God, to… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Why does each thing on the earth war against each other thing? Why does each small thing in the world have to… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense. It is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth;… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The Fear of the Lord, that is the beginning of wisdom, and therefore belongs to the beginnings, and is felt in the… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The perfect happiness of men on the earth (if it ever comes) will not be a flat and solid thing, like the… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“It may well be on such a night of clouds and cruel colors that there is brought forth upon the earth such… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Yes, he said in a voice indescribable, you are right. I am afraid of him. Therefore I swear by God that I… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Happiness is a state of the soul; a state in which our natures are full of the wine of an ancient youth,… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“I never use paradox. The statements I make are wearisome and obvious common sense. I have even been driven to the tedium of reading… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Nothing, again, could be more prosaic and impenetrable than the domestic energies of Miss Diana Duke. But Innocent had somehow blundered on the discovery… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The mass of men have been forced to be gay about the little things, but sad about the big ones. Nevertheless (I offer my… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“ask yourself how many people you have met who grumbled at a thing as incurable, and how many who attacked it as curable? How… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Internationalism is in any case hostile to democracy….The only purely popular government is local, and founded on local knowledge. The citizens can rule the… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“There was a short railway official travelling up to the terminus, three fairly short market-gardeners picked up two stations afterwards, one very short widow… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.” — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Man, by a blind instinct, knew that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first. The authority of priests to absolve,… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
