Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.

Dogmatism does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought.

Materialists and Madmen never have doubts.

The modern world is filled with men who hold dogmas so strongly that they do not even know they are dogmas.

Happiness is a mystery like religion, and it should never be rationalized

You can only find truth with logic if you have already found it without it.

Free verse is like free love; it is a contradiction in terms.

Psychoanalysis is confession without absolution.

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.

Why shouldn't we quarrel about a word? What is the good of words if they aren't important enough to quarrel over? Why do we choose one word more than another if there isn't any difference between them?

As enunciated today, "progress" is simply a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative.

There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.

Carlyle said that men were mostly fools. Christianity, with a surer and more reverend realism, says that they are all fools.

Mr. Shaw is (I suspect) the only man on earth who has never written any poetry.

New roads: new ruts.

The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs.

The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.

The word "orthodoxy" not only no longer means being right; it practically means being wrong.

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

Trzeba być mądrym, aby robić pieniądze. Zgoda! Ale najpierw trzeba być wystarczająco głupim, żeby pieniędzy pragnąć.

Wariat to człowiek, który stracił wszystko za wyjątkiem rozumu.

To nie świat stał się o wiele gorszy, to serwis informacyjny stał się o wiele lepszy.

Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.

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

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

Carlyle said that men were mostly fools. Christianity, with a surer and more reverend realism, says that they are all fools.

Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long as you have one good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem.

Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf is better than a whole loaf.

Mr. Shaw is (I suspect) the only man on earth who has never written any poetry.

The modern world . . . has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything.

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.

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

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it

The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, which is a nuicance for the few people who grow up.

The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid.

There is something to be said for every error; but, whatever may be said for it, the most important thing to be said about it is that it is erroneous.

The whole order of things is as outrageous as any miracle which could presume to violate it.

There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one. That is why, in spite of a thousand disadvantages, the world will always turn return to monogamy.

Hell is God's great compliment to the reality of human freedom and the dignity of human choice.

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up.

Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.

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

The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in fairy books, "charm", "spell", "enchantment". They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery.

One sees great things from the valley, only small things from the peak.

Odwaga jest niemalże sprzecznością. Oznacza to silne pragnienie życia przyjmujące formę gotowości na śmierć.

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