G.K. Chesterton

"The warrior fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him."

- G.K. Chesterton

"The traveler sees what he sees, the tourists sees what he has come to see."

- G.K. Chesterton

"The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see."

- G.K. Chesterton

"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."

- G.K. Chesterton

"The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year, but that we should have a new soul."

- G.K. Chesterton

"Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable."

- G.K. Chesterton

"Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form or a readiness to die."

- G.K. Chesterton

"The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him."

- G.K. Chesterton

"Fairy Tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."

- G.K. Chesterton

"Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die."

- G.K. Chesterton

"Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die."

- G.K. Chesterton

"A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen."

- G.K. Chesterton

"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered."

- G.K. Chesterton

"To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless."

- G.K. Chesterton

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried."

- G.K. Chesterton

"We are perishing for lack of wonder, not for lack of wonders."

- G.K. Chesterton

"“My country, right or wrong,” is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, “My mother, drunk or sober.”"

- G.K. Chesterton

"The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums."

- G.K. Chesterton

"Democracy is like blowing your nose. You may not do it well, but it's something you ought to do yourself."

- G.K. Chesterton

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

- G.K. Chesterton

"Against a dark sky all flowers look like fireworks."

- G.K. Chesterton

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

- G.K. Chesterton

"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"

- G.K. Chesterton

"A lucky man is one who carries the spirit of joy and gratitude, and the Irish are masters at weaving luck into their everyday cheer."

- G.K. Chesterton

"I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder."

- G.K. Chesterton

"When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude."

- G.K. Chesterton

"When it comes to life, the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude."

- G.K. Chesterton

"Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder."

- G.K. Chesterton

"Irishmen are not drunk all the time, but when they are, she’s an angel!"

- G.K. Chesterton

"New Year’s Day is a good time to fix one’s eyes on the only true goal: to be better human beings."

- G.K. Chesterton

"Fairytales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist; but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."

- G.K. Chesterton

"Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox; that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home."

- G.K. Chesterton

"All the great groups that stood about the Cross represent in one way or another the great historical truth of the time; that the world could not save itself. Man could do no more. Rome and Jerusalem and Athens and everything else were going down like a sea turned into a slow cataract. Externally indeed the ancient world was still at its strongest; it is always at that moment that the inmost weakness begins. But in order to understand that weakness we must repeat what has been said more than once; that it was not the weakness of a thing originally weak. It was emphatically the strength of the world that was turned to weakness and the wisdom of the world that was turned to folly. In this story of Good Friday it is the best things in the world that are at their worst. That is what really shows us the world at its worst. It was, for instance, the priests of a true monotheism and the soldiers of an international civilisation. Rome, the legend, founded upon fallen Troy and triumphant over fallen Carthage, had stood for a heroism which was the nearest that any pagan ever came to chivalry. Rome had defended the household gods and the human decencies against the ogres of Africa and the hermaphrodite monstrosities of Greece. But in the lightning flash of this incident, we see great Rome, the imperial republic, going downward under her Lucretian doom. Scepticism has eaten away even the confident sanity of the conquerors of the world. He who is enthroned to say what is justice can only ask: ‘What is truth?’ So in that drama which decided the whole fate of antiquity, one of the central figures is fixed in what seems the reverse of his true role. Rome was almost another name for responsibility. Yet he stands for ever as a sort of rocking statue of the irresponsible. Man could do no more. Even the practical had become the impracticable. Standing between the pillars of his own judgement-seat, a Roman had washed his hands of the world."

- G.K. Chesterton

"The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us."

- G.K. Chesterton

"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead."

- G.K. Chesterton

"The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul."

- G.K. Chesterton