The humorous look of children is perhaps the most endearing of all the bonds that hold the Cosmos together. Their top-heavy dignity… — 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
When we reverence anything in the mature, it is their virtues or their wisdom, and this is an easy matter. But we… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The sceptic ultimately undermines democracy (1) because he can see no significance in death and such things of a literal equality; (2)… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Hell is God's great compliment to the reality of human freedom and the dignity of human choice. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
When people begin to ignore human dignity, it will not be long before they begin to ignore human rights. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
If the common man in the past had a grave respect for property, it may conceivably have been because he sometimes had… — 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