G.K. Chesterton

Life is indeed terribly complicated—to a man who has lost his principles.

Suppose, my dear Chadd, suppose it is we who are the idiots because we are not afraid of devils in the dark?

The simplification of anything is always sensational.

Thrift is poetic because it is creative; waste is unpoetic because it is waste.

The modern materialists are not permitted to doubt; they are forbidden to believe.

There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped.

the function of imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange; not so much to make wonders facts as to make facts wonders.

In the glad old days, before the rise of modern morbidities...it used to be thought a disadvantage to be misunderstood.

What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition and settled upon the organ of conviction, where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himsel…

Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.

When men have come to the edge of a precipice, it is the lover of life who has the spirit to leap backwards, and only the pessimist who continues to believe in progress.

Only the Christian Church can offer any rational objection to a complete confidence in the rich. For she has maintained from the beginning that the danger was not in man's environment, but in man. Further, she has mainta…

Political Economy means that everybody except politicians must be economical.

The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.

There is no such thing as education. The thing is merely a loose phrase for the passing on to others of whatever truth or virtue we happen to have ourselves. It is typical of our time that the more doubtful we are about…

The only defensible war is a war of defense.

Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable. Never drink when you are wretched without it, or you will be like the grey-faced gin-drinker in the slum; but drink when you would be happy without it, an…

In one sense, at any rate, it is more valuable to read bad literature than good literature. Good literature may tell us the mind of one man; but bad literature may tell us the mind of many men. A good novel tells us the…

The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for de…

I shall approach. Before taking off his hat, I shall take off my own. I shall say, The Marquis de Saint Eustache, I believe. He will say, The celebrated Mr. Syme, I presume. He will say in the most exquisite French, How…

There nearly always is a method in madness.

All the great groups that stood about the Cross represent in one way or another the great historical truth of the time; that the world could not save itself. Man could do no more. Rome and Jerusalem and Athens and everyt…

It was the outstanding fact about St. Thomas [Aquinas] that he loved books and lived on books ... When asked for what he thanked God most, he answered simply, ' I have understood every page I ever read'.

Free verse is like free love; it is a contradiction in terms.

if a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small.

I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incomp…

It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.

Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth: this has been e…

Los cuentos de hadas superan la realidad no porque nos digan que los dragones existen, sino porque nos dicen que pueden ser vencidos.

The wise old fairy tales never were so silly as to say that the prince and the princess lived peacefully ever afterwards. The fairy tales said that the prince and princess lived happily ever afterwards; and so they did.…

A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true.

In the struggle for existence, it is only on those who hang on for ten minutes after all is hopeless, that hope begins to dawn.

It is well sometimes to half understand a poem in the same manner that we half understand the world.

A madman is not someone who has lost his reason but someone who has lost everything but his reason

People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.

It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.

Daybreak is a never-ending glory; getting out of bed is a never ending nuisance.

Right is Right even if nobody does it. Wrong is wrong even if everybody is wrong about it.

Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.

How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to…

And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than look down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.

Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.

That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already, but that God could have His back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents forever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt…

Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.

Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.

Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.

A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.

Nobody understands the nature of the Church, or the ringing note of the creed descending from antiquity, who does not realize that the whole world once very nearly died of broadmindedness and the brotherhood of all relig…

Paradox - Truth standing on her head to get attention.

All true friendliness begins with fire and food and drink and the recognition of rain or frost. ...Each human soul has in a sense to enact for itself the gigantic humility of the Incarnation. Every man must descend into…