Idolatry is when you worship what you should use, and use what you should worship. — 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
Powerful men who have powerful passions use much of their strength in forging chains for themselves. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
One of the chief uses of religion is that it makes us remember our coming from darkness, the simple fact that we… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Correctitude implies nowadays a formal or fastidious use of words; and what is wanted is not so much the correct as the… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Thrift is the really romantic thing; economy is more romantic than extravagance... thrift is poetic because it is creative; waste is unpoetic… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
[Consider] a fence or gate erected across a road] The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says,… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Our civilization has decided that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Science only means knowledge; and for [Greek] ancients it did only mean knowledge. Thus the favorite science of the Greeks was Astronomy,… — 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