Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

“When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?”

“I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.”

“When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.”

“To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.”

“A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over... is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.”

“Coincidences are spiritual puns.”

“The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense.”

“Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.”

“All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.”

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

“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.”

“Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.”

“One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.”

“The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.”

“Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich.”

“When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.”

“Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kid of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty.”

“If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.”

“Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.”