Democracy is like blowing your nose. You may not do it well, but it's something you ought to do yourself. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
There is also an insulting speech about 'one grey day just like another'. You might as well talk about one green tree… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Free verse'? You may as well call sleeping in a ditch 'free architecture'. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
...but out of the desert, from the dry places and the dreadful suns, come the cruel children of the lonely God; the… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
In the modern conflict between the Smile and the Laugh, I am all in favor of laughing. The recent stage of culture… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
He said he didn't very well understand how George was going to sleep any more than he did now, seeing that there… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
A fairly clear line separated advertisement from art. ... The first effect of the triumph of the capitalist (if we allow him… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
An imbecile habit has arisen in modern controversy of saying that such and such a creed can be held in one age… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
So far as a man may be proud of a religion rooted in humility, I am very proud of my religion; I… — 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
The coming peril is the intellectual, educational, psychological and artistic overproduction, which, equally with economic overproduction, threatens the well-being of contemporary civilisation.… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
This is the perpetual and pitiful tragedy of the practical man in practical affairs. He always begins with a flourish of contempt… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
It may be a mere patriotic bias, though I do not think so, but it seems to me that the English aristocracy… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The Byzantines hammered away at their hard and orthodox symbols, because they could not be in a mood to believe that men… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The Sentimentalist, roughly speaking, is the man who wants to eat his cake and have it. He has no sense of honor… — 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
![“[Consider] a fence or gate erected across a road] The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you…” quote by Gilbert K. Chesterton](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/286/gilbert-k-chesterton-223_answers_consider-a-fence-or-gate-erected-across_1311608.jpg)
