G. K. Chesterton

It is a strange thing that many truly spiritual men, such as General Gordon, have actually spent some hours in speculating upon the precise location of the Garden of Eden. Most probably we are in Eden still. It is only our eyes that have …

There runs a strange law through the length of human history — that men are continually tending to undervalue their environment, to undervalue their happiness, to undervalue themselves.

In our time the blasphemies are threadbare. Pessimism is now patently, as it always was essentially, more commonplace than piety. Profanity is now more than an affectation — it is a convention. The curse against God is Exercise I in the …

The cause which is blocking all progress today is the subtle scepticism which whispers in a million ears that things are not good enough to be worth improving. If the world is good we are revolutionaries, if the world is evil we must be …

A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.

It is only great men who take up a great space by not being there.

Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.

The full potentialities of human fury cannot be reached until a friend of both parties tactfully intervenes.

These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own.

We shall soon be in a world in which a man may be howled down for saying that two and two make four, in which furious party cries will be raised against anybody who says that cows have horns, in which people will persecute the heresy of …

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.

If there were not God, there would be no atheists.

Irreverence is a very servile parasite of reverence; and has starved with its starving lord.

Atheism is, I suppose, the supreme example of a simple faith.

I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid …

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.

For children are innocent and love justice; while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy

There are two ways of dealing with nonsense in this world. One way is to put nonsense in the right place; as when people put nonsense into nursery rhymes. The other is to put nonsense in the wrong place; as when they put it into …

It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.

And I will add this point of merely personal experience of humanity: when men have a real explanation they explain it, eagerly and copiously and in common speech, as Huxley freely gave it when he thought he had it. When they have no …

They seem to forget that if the Crusaders nearly conquered Palestine, it was but a return upon the Moslems who had nearly conquered Europe.

A mystic is a man who separates heaven and earth even if he enjoys them both.

The men that worked for England They have their graves at home; * * * * And they that rule in England In stately conclave met, Alas, alas, for England,

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.