Category: Gilbert K. Chesterton

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.

Some men never feel small, but these are the few men who are.

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.

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

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.

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

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.

The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men.

Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.