All real democracy is an attempt like that of a jolly hostess to bring the shy people out. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The real argument against aristocracy is that it always means the rule of the ignorant. For the most dangerous of all forms… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
We have had no good comic operas of late, because the real world has been more comic than any possible opera. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
I am not fighting a hopeless fight. People who have fought in real fights don't, as a rule. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable one. The trouble is that it is… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
There is only one thing that it requires real courage to say, and that is a truism. — 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
There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
It is customary to complain of the bustle and strenuousness of our epoch. But in truth the chief mark of our epoch… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
...but out of the desert, from the dry places and the dreadful suns, come the cruel children of the lonely God; the… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Americans are a very backward people, with all the real virtues of a backward people; the patriarchal simplicity and human dignity of… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
If Christianity should happen to be true - that is to say, if its God is the real God of the universe… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Any man who preaches real love is bound to beget hate. It is as true of democratic fraternity as a divine love;… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
I despise Birth-Control first because it is ... an entirely meaningless word; and is used so as to curry favour even with… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
This is, first and last, the real value of Christmas; in so far as the mythology remains at all it is a… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The perils, rewards, punishments, and fulfillments of an adventure must be real, or the adventure is only a shifting and heartless nightmare.… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
...I will praise the English climate till I die—even if I die of the English climate. There is no weather so good… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Sir Hiram Maxim is a genuine and typical example of the man of science, romantic, excitable, full of real but somewhat obvious… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
All the controversialists who have become conscious of the real issue are already saying of our ideal exactly what used to be… — 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
Very few people in the world would care to listen to the real defense of their own characters. The real defense, the… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
People accuse journalism of being too personal; but to me it has always seemed far too impersonal. It is charged with tearing… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving… — 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 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
