It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted and only a few… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
There is less difference than many suppose between the ideal Socialist system, in which the big businesses are run by the State,… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Though the academic authorities are actually proud of conducting everything by means of Examinations, they seldom indulge in what religious people used… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
A nation is not going mad when it does extravagant things, so long as it does them in an extravagant spirit. But… — 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
The position we have now reached is this: starting from the State, we try to remedy the failures of all the families,… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The coziness between church and state is good for the state and bad for the church — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Only men to whom the family is sacred will ever have a standard or a status by which to criticize the State.… — 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
