G. K. Chesterton

"I object to a quarrel because it always interrupts an argument."

"Earnest Freethinkers need not worry themselves so much about the persecutions of the past. Before the Liberal idea is dead or triumphant we shall see wars and persecutions the like of which the world has never seen."

"There is one creed: neath no world-terrors wing Apples forget to grow on apple-trees."

"The simplification of anything is always sensational."

"There is only one thing that it requires real courage to say, and that is a truism."

"Briefly, you can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it."

"Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance."

"The centre of every mans existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel."

"He is only a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of the Conservative."

"I do not, in my private capacity, believe that a baby gets his best physical food by sucking his thumb; nor that a man gets his best moral food by sucking his soul, and denying its dependence on God or other good things. I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder."

"I think that if they gave me leave, Within the world to stand, I would be good through all the day I spent in fairyland. They should not hear a word from me, Of selfishness or scorn, If only I could find the door, If only I were born."

"When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood Then surely I was born. With monstrous head and sickening cry And ears like errant wings, The devil’s walking parody On all four-footed things."