Quotes from Gilbert K. Chesterton

Half a truth is better than no politics.

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

Love means to love that which is unlovable or it is no virtue at all.

The only defensible war is a war of defense.

Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.

All architecture is great architecture after sunset perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.

If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God.

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

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

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

Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young.

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.

Brave men are all vertebrates they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.

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.

What affects men sharply about a foreign nation is not so much finding or not finding familiar things it is rather not finding them in the familiar place.

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.

The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything.

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.

Women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes.

The family is the test of freedom because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.

Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.

We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.