I would rather a boy learnt in the roughest school the courage to hit a politician, or gained in the hardest school… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
If I did not believe in God, I should still want my doctor, my lawyer and my banker to do so. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The Party System was founded on one national notion of fair play. It was the notion that folly and futility should be… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
You've got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Now it has appeared to me unfair that humanity should be engaged perpetually in calling all those things bad which have been… — 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
It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down... Why do we laugh? Because… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
I may not practice what I preach but God forbid I should preach what I practice — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
I do not know much about Mohammed or Mohammedanism. I do not take the Koran to bed with me every night. But,… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
I should say that psycho-analysis was confession without absolution. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Because a girl should have long hair, she should have clean hair; because she should have clean hair, she should not have… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The word 'good' has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Every one on the earth should believe that he has something to give to the world which cannot otherwise be given. — 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
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
A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over... is saying no good son should warn… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Idolatry is when you worship what you should use, and use what you should worship. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
A man who says that no patriot should attack the Boer War until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he… — 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
Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalised. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
There is nothing harder to learn than painting and nothing which most people take less trouble about learning. An art school is… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when Joy is the fundamental thing in him, and Grief the superficial. Melancholy should… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
There is always in the healthy mind an obscure prompting that religion teaches us rather to dig than to climb; that if… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
the object of a new year is not that we should have a new year, but rather that we should have a… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Every one on this earth should believe, amid whatever madness or moral failure, that his life and temperament have some object on… — 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