“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses… — G.K. Chesterton Catholic Copy Share Image
“What we need is not the cold acceptance of the world as a compromise, but some way in which we can heartily… — G.K. Chesterton Anger Copy Share Image
“Before we congratulate ourselves upon the absence of certain faults from our nation or society, we ought to ask ourselves why it… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Only the Christian Church can offer any rational objection to a complete confidence in the rich. For she has maintained from the… — G.K. Chesterton Christian church Copy Share Image
“In short, the democratic faith is this: that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves—the mating of… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“No,' said Gould, with an unusual and convincing gravity; 'I do not believe that being perfectly good in all respects would make… — G.K. Chesterton Goodness Copy Share Image
“People, if you have any prayers, Say prayers for me: And lay me under a Christian stone In that lost land I… — G.K. Chesterton Prayer Copy Share Image
“In other words, we may, by fixing our attention almost fiercely on the facts actually before us, force them to turn into… — G.K. Chesterton Adventure Copy Share Image
“It is in our own daily life that we are to look for the portents and the prodigies… Compared with this life,… — G.K. Chesterton Daily life Copy Share Image
“most cannibalism is not a primitive or even a bestial habit. It is artificial and even artistic; a sort of art for… — G.K. Chesterton Art Copy Share Image
“The old tyrants invoked the past; the new tyrants will invoke the future evolution has produced the snail and the owl; evolution… — G.K. Chesterton Evolution Copy Share Image
“Does the reader realise the despair that falls upon the hapless Catholic journalist at such moments; or how wild a prayer he… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Now I have no notion at all of propounding a new ideal. There is no new ideal imaginable by the madness of… — G.K. Chesterton Sophists Copy Share Image
“When the Professor is told by the Polynesian that once there was nothing except a great feathered serpent, unless the learned man… — G.K. Chesterton Adventure Copy Share Image
“But there is another possible attitude towards the records of the past, and I have never been able to understand why it… — G.K. Chesterton Books Copy Share Image
“It stated that Rome tolerates, in her relation with the Russian Uniats, "strange heresies and even bearded and wedded clergy." In that… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“We shall have gone deeper than the deeps of heaven and grown older than the oldest angels before we feel, even in… — G.K. Chesterton God Copy Share Image
“Oh, what's the good of talking about men?" cried Mary impatiently; "why, one might as well be a lady novelist or some… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“But there is one thing that is infinitely more absurd and unpractical than burning a man for his philosophy. This is the… — G.K. Chesterton Philosophy Copy Share Image
“The perfect happiness of men on the earth (if it ever comes) will not be a flat and solid thing, like the… — G.K. Chesterton Happiness Copy Share Image
“But if he has lost the sane vision, he can only get it back by something very like a mad vision; that… — G.K. Chesterton Dreams Copy Share Image
“But as a matter of fact, another part of my trade, too, made me sure you weren't a priest." "What?" asked the… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The word 'heresy' not only means no longer being wrong; it practically means being clear-headed and courageous. The word 'orthodoxy' not only… — G.K. Chesterton Heresy Copy Share Image
“There are two ways of renouncing the devil,” he said; “and the difference is perhaps the deepest chasm in modern religion. One… — G.K. Chesterton Religion Copy Share Image
“There is only one thing that can never go past a certain point in its alliance with oppression--and that is orthodoxy. I… — G.K. Chesterton Orthodoxy Copy Share Image
“A big society is a society for the promotion of narrowness. It is a machinery for the purpose of guarding the solitary… — G.K. Chesterton Community Copy Share Image
“Roughly speaking, there are three kinds of people in the world…the division follows lines of real psychological cleavage. I do not offer… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The only crime of the Government is that it governs. The unpardonable sin of the supreme power is that it is supreme.… — G.K. Chesterton Activism Copy Share Image
“the function of imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange; not so much… — G.K. Chesterton Imagination Copy Share Image
“The perplexity of life arises from their being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any… — G.K. Chesterton Adventure Copy Share Image
“We have never even begun to understand a people until we have found something that we do not understand. So long as… — G.K. Chesterton Multiculturalism Copy Share Image
“The old idealistic republicans used to found democracy on the idea that all men were equally intelligent. Believe me, the sane and… — G.K. Chesterton Democracy Copy Share Image
“The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay; Round us in antic order their crippled vices came— Lust… — G.K. Chesterton Fear Copy Share Image
“Job is an optimist. He shakes the pillars of the world and strikes insanely at the heavens; he lashes the stars, but… — G.K. Chesterton Bible Copy Share Image
“The optimist's pleasure was prosaic, for it dwelt on the naturalness of everything; the Christian pleasure was poetic, for it dwelt on… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“But again I seem to hear, like a kind of echo, an answer from beyond the world. 'You will have real obligations,… — G.K. Chesterton Adventure Copy Share Image
“Basil Grant and I were talking one day in what is perhaps the most perfect place for talking on earth--the top of… — G.K. Chesterton Fairy tale Copy Share Image
“All the dizzy and colossal things conceded depend upon one small thing withheld. All the wild and whirling things that are let… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Humility is perpetually putting us back in the primal darkness. There all light is lightning, startling and instantaneous. Until we understand that… — G.K. Chesterton Darkness Copy Share Image
“I have called this book "What Is Wrong with the World?" and the upshot of the title can be easily and clearly… — G.K. Chesterton Books Copy Share Image
