Some quotes from G. K. Chesterton
I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid.
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.
Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.
Coincidences are spiritual puns.
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.
I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.
Journalism largely consists of saying Lord Jones is Dead to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.
Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.
One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.
People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.
The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.
The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.
The only way to be sure of catching a train is to miss the one before it.
The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.
Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.
The one really rousing thing about human history is that, whether or no the proceedings go right, at any rate, the prophecies always go wrong. The promises are never fulfilled and the threats are never fulfilled. Even when good things do happen, they are never the good things that were guaranteed. And even when bad things happen, they are never the bad things that were inevitable. You may be quite certain that, if an old pessimist says the country is going to the dogs, it will go to any other animals except the dogs; if it be to the dromedaries or even the dragons. ... It was as if one weather prophet confidently predicted blazing sunshine and the other was equally certain of blinding fog; and they were both buried in a beautiful snow-storm and lay, fortunately dead, under a clear and starry sky.
We have a suffocating sense of luxury and no sense at all of liberty. All the pleasure-hunters seem to be themselves hunted. All the children of fortune seem to be chained to the wheel. There is very little that really even pretends to be happiness in all this sort of harassed hedonism.
Customs are generally unselfish. Habits are nearly always selfish.
When giving treats to friends or children, give them what they like, emphatically not what is good for them.
My attitude toward progress has passed from antagonism to boredom. I have long ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday.
Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.
Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God.
When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it.
There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.
The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted: precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden.
These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own.
Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.
All men thirst to confess their crimes more than tired beasts thirst for water; but they naturally object to confessing them while other people, who have also committed the same crimes, sit by and laugh at them.
All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive.
Savages and modern artists are alike strangely driven to create something uglier than themselves. But the artists find it harder.
Though the academic authorities are actually proud of conducting everything by means of Examinations, they seldom indulge in what religious people used to describe as Self-Examination. The consequence is that the modern State has educated its citizens in a series of ephemeral fads.
Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.
The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games which it is most attached is called, Keep tomorrow dark, and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) Cheat the Prophet. The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. Then they go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun.
The man who says, "My critically discerning intellect can no longer credit the doctrine of the Trinity" typically means "I'm sleeping with my neighbor's wife."
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