Democracy is like blowing your nose. You may not do it well, but it's something you ought to do yourself. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
I still hold. . .that the suburbs ought to be either glorified by romance and religion or else destroyed by fire from… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Modern nature-worship is all upside down. Trees and fields ought to be the ordinary things; terraces and temples ought to be extraordinary.… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Being 'contented' ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being content with an attic ought not to… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been reversed. Nowadays the part of… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
To mix science up with philosophy is only to produce a philosophy that has lost all its ideal value and a science… — 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
Journalism only tells us what men are doing; it is fiction that tells us what they are thinking, and still more what… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The average man votes below himself; he votes with half a mind or a hundredth part of one. A man ought 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… — 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
