Gilbert K. Chesterton

For when we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything.

I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a story-teller

St Thomas (Aqinas) loved books and lived on books... When asked for what he thanked God most, he answered simply, ‘I have understood every page I ever read’.

Classic literature is still something that hangs in the air like a song.

humor can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle

The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them.

I did try to found a little heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.

Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If in your bold creative way you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe.

somehow one must love the world without being worldly.

And though St. John saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators.

I am the fool in this story, and no rebel shall hurl me from my throne.

It is quite easy to see why a legend is treated, and ought to be treated, more respectfully than a book of history. The legend is generally made by the majority of people in the village, who are sane. The book is generally written by the one man in the village who is mad.

But whenever one meets modern thinkers (as one often does) progressing toward a madhouse, one always finds, on inquiry, that they have just had a splendid escape from another madhouse. Thus, hundreds of people become Socialists, not because they have tried Socialism and found it nice, but because they have tried Individualism and found it particularly nasty.

Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.

In all legends men have thought of women as sublime separately but horrible in a herd.

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.

Pessimism is not in being tired of evil but in being tired of good. Despair does not lie in being weary of suffering, but in being weary of joy. It is when for some reason or other good things in a society no longer work that the society begins to decline; when its food does not feed, when its cures do not cure, when its blessings refuse to bless.

We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent. We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre's castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return to at evening.

The Reformer is always right about what's wrong. However, he's often wrong about what is right.

Be careful how you suggest things to me. For there is in me a madness which goes beyond martyrdom, the madness of an utterly idle man.

Individually, men may present a more or less rational appearance, eating, sleeping, and scheming. But humanity a a whole is changeful, mystical, fickle, delightful. Men are men, but Man is a woman.