The reason that angels fly is that they take themselves so lightly. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The prophet and the quack are alike admired for a generation, and admired for the wrong reasons. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Whatever else we may say of our own age, for good or evil, nobody is likely to call it an Age of… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
There is only one reason an intelligent person doesn't believe in miracles. He or she believes in materialism. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad, but chess players do. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The difficulty of explaining ‘why I am a Catholic’ is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Some of the most frantic lies on the face of life are told with modesty and restraint; for the simple reason that… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world... The reason is obvious. In a large community… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Students of popular science... are always insisting that Christianity and Buddhism are very much alike, especially Buddhism. This is generally believed, and… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
There is no great harm in the theorist who makes up a new theory to fit a new event. But the theorist… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
A radical generally meant a man who thought he could somehow pull up the root without affecting the flower. A conservative generally… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
We all know that the 'divine glory of the ego' is socially a great nuisance; we all do actually value our friends… — 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
I like the Americans for a great many reasons. I like them because even the modern thing called industrialism has not entirely… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Liberty is the very last idea that seems to occur to anybody, in considering any political or social proposal. It is only… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The timidity of the child or the savage is entirely reasonable; they are alarmed at this world, because this world is a… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
We are always giving foreign names to very native things. If there is a thing that reeks of the glorious tradition of… — 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
Literary men are being employed to praise a big business man personally, as men used to praise a king. They not only… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
[Consider] a fence or gate erected across a road] The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says,… — 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
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
![“[Consider] a fence or gate erected across a road] The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you…” quote by Gilbert K. Chesterton](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/286/gilbert-k-chesterton-223_answers_consider-a-fence-or-gate-erected-across_1311608.jpg)
