G. K. Chesterton

“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”

“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”

“Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.”

“Acceptance is the truest kinship with humanity.”

“There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.”

“Artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs.”

“The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them.”

“Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers.”

“The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life in order to keep it.”

“Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.”

“Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.”

“True contentment is the power of getting of any situation all that there is in it.”

“Forgiving means to pardon the unpardonable, faith means believing the unbelievable, and hoping means to hope when things are hopeless.”

“You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching,...”

“It matters very little whether a man is discontented in the name of pessimism or progress, if his discontent does in fact paralyse his power of appreciating what he has got.”

“The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.”

“True contentment... is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous, and it is rare.”

“I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act, but I do believe in a fate that falls on men unless they act.”

“There is one thing which gives radiance to everything. It is the idea of something around the corner.”

“The true object of human life is play.”