If we want to give poor people soap we must set out deliberately to give them luxuries. If we will not make… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The voice of the special rebels and prophets, recommending discontent, should, as I have said, sound now and then suddenly, like a… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Each generation is converted by the saint who contradicts it most. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint,… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
There have been household gods and household saints and household fairies. I am not sure that there have yet been any factory… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
It is better to speak wisdom foolishly like the saints than to speak folly wisely like the deans. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Saint George he was for England, And before he killed the dragon he drank a pint of English ale out of an… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The great saint may be said to mix all his thoughts with thanks. All goods look better when they look like gifts. — 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
