Gilbert K. Chesterton

The test of happiness is gratitude.

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

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

There is no obligation on us to be richer, or busier, or more efficient, or more productive, or more progressive, or any way worldlier or wealthier, if it does not make us happier.

But there is in everything a reasonable division of labour. I have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it.

Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.

It is well sometimes to half understand a poem in the same manner that we half understand the world.

The issue is now clear. It is between light and darkness and everyone must choose his side.

Do not look at the faces in the illustrated papers. Look at the faces in the street.

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

There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.

Contemporary society has become dry, not for lack of wonders but for lack of wonder.

It might reasonably be maintained that the true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground. To be at last in such secure innocence that one can juggle with the universe and the stars, to be so good that one can treat everything as a joke - that may be, perhaps, the real end and final holiday of human souls.

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

The simplification of anything is always sensational.

Whether a man chooses to tell the truth in long sentences or short jokes is a problem analogous to whether he chooses to tell the truth in French or in German.

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

Coincidences are spiritual puns.

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

The only way to be sure of catching a train is to miss the one before it.