Quotes from Gilbert K. Chesterton

Adventure is the champagne of life.

The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered is to miss the train before.

I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.

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

Over-civilization and barbarism are within an inch of each other. And a mark of both is the power of medicine-men.

The professional soldier gains more and more power as the general courage of a community declines.

The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.

If men will not be governed by the Ten Commandments, they shall be governed by the ten thousand commandments

These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own.

I believe in preaching to the converted; for I have generally found that the converted do not understand their own religion.

Wait and see whether the religion of the Servile State is not in every case what I say: the encouragement of small virtues supporting capitalism, the discouragement of the huge virtues that defy it.

One of the chief uses of religion is that it makes us remember our coming from darkness, the simple fact that we are created.

Theology is only thought applied to religion.

In anything that does cover the whole of your life - in your philosophy and your religion - you must have mirth. If you do not have mirth you will certainly have madness.

Posting a letter and getting married [sic] are among the few things left that are entirely romantic; for to be entirely romantic, a thing must be irrevocable

Boys like romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales-because they find them romantic.

If a rhinoceros were to enter this restaurant now, there is no denying he would have great power here. But I should be the first to rise and assure him that he had no authority whatever.

The chief object of education is not to learn things but to unlearn things.

We are learning to do a great many clever things. The next great task will be to learn not to do them.

The present condition of fame is merely fashion.

The only defensible war is a war of defense.

A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching.

The Darwinian movement has made no difference to mankind, except that, instead of talking unphilosophically about philosophy, they now talk unscientifically about science.