G. K. Chesterton

The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.

We have passed the age of the demagogue, the man who has little to say and says it loud. We have come to the age of the mystagogue or don, the man who has nothing to say, but says it softly and impressively in an indistinct whisper.

Shyness is always the sign of a divided soul; a man is shy because he somehow thinks his position at once despicable and important. If he were without humility he would not care; and if he were without pride he would not care.

For there are two types of great humorist: those who love to see a man absurd and those who hate to see him absurd. Of the first kind are Rabelais and Dickens; of the second kind are Swift and Bernard Shaw.

We all know that constancy, jealousy, and the personal pledge are natural and inevitable in sex; we do not feel any surprise when we see them either in a murder or in a valentine.

The Puritan is only strong enough to stiffen; the Catholic is strong enough to relax.

Ireland is a country in which the political conflicts are at least genuine; they are about something. They are about patriotism, about religion, or about money: the three great realities. In other words, they are concerned with what …

A man must be orthodox upon most things, or he will never even have time to preach his own heresy.

It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.

Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

Precisely because our political speeches are meant to be reported, they are not worth reporting. Precisely because they are carefully designed to be read, nobody reads them.

For fear of the newspapers politicians are dull, and at last they are too dull even for the newspapers.

It is not only possible to say a great deal in praise of play; it is really possible to say the highest things in praise of it. It might reasonably be maintained that the true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; …

For my part, I should be inclined to suggest that the chief object of education should be to restore simplicity. If you like to put it so, the chief object of education is not to learn things; nay, the chief object of education is to …

All injustice begins in the mind. And anomalies accustom the mind to the idea of unreason and untruth.

An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.

The pure modernist is merely a snob; he cannot bear to be a month behind the fashion.

It is incomprehensible to me that any thinker can calmly call himself a modernist; he might as well call himself a Thursdayite.

It is so easy to be solemn; it is so hard to be frivolous.

I cannot understand the people who take literature seriously; but I can love them, and I do. Out of my love I warn them to keep clear of this book.

A man looking at a hippopotamus may sometimes be tempted to regard a hippopotamus as an enormous mistake; but he is also bound to confess that a fortunate inferiority prevents him personally from making such mistakes.

When some English moralists write about the importance of having character, they appear to mean only the importance of having a dull character.

A sober man may become a drunkard through being a coward. A brave man may become a coward through being a drunkard.

America has a new delicacy, a coarse, rank refinement.