GILBERT K. CHESTERTON

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

A stiff apology is a second insult... The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.

No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete.

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

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.

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

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

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

The simplification of anything is always sensational.

You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.

Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.

Coincidences are spiritual puns.

Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.

I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it, so I signed up for acting instead.

And they that rule in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they have no graves as yet.

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.

In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it.

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.

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

Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.

Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.

We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbour.

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.