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
For us who live in cities Nature is not natural. Nature is supernatural. Just as monks watched and strove to get a… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Doing nothing is sometimes one of the highest of the duties of man. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Aristocracy is an atmosphere; it is sometimes a healthy atmosphere; but it is very hard to say when it becomes an unhealthy… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
One can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
A man looking at a hippopotamus may sometimes be tempted to regard a hippopotamus as an enormous mistake; but he is also… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
[V]ariety of climate should always go with stability of abode.... an Englishman’s house is not only his castle; it is his fairy… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Most Americans are born drunk, and really require a little wine or beer to sober them. They have a sort of permanent… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
I would not say that old men grow wise, for men never grow wise; and many old men retain a very attractive… — 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