Quotes by G.K. Chesterson

You've got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor.  Why should it?  The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than any one else in there being some decent government.  The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes been objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.  Aristocrats were always anarchists, as you can see from the barons' wars.

" When Men stop believing in God they do not believe in nothing ; they believe in anything.

     "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."

If there is one thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals it is the modern strengthening of minor morals.  Thus it is considered more withering to accuse a man of bad taste than of bad ethics.  Cleanliness is not next to godliness nowadays, for cleanliness is made an essential and godliness is regarded as an offence....

There will be a new great religion, the Religion of Methuselhites: with pomps and priests and altars.  Its devout crusaders will vow themselves in thousands with a great voice to live long.  But there is one comfort: they won't.

“It does seem to have a moral under all its gaiety, “ assented Syme; “but may I ask you two questions?  You need not fear to give me information, because, as you remember, you very wisely exorted from me a promise not to tell the police, a promise I shall certainly keep.  So it is in mere curiosity that I make my queries.  First of all, what is it really about?  What is it you object to?  You want to abolish Government?”
    “To abolish God!” said Gregory, opening the eyes of a fanatic.  “We do not only want to upset a few despotisms and police regulations; that sort of anarchism does exist, but it is a mere branch of the Nonconformists.  We dig deeper and we blow you higher.  We wish to deny all those arbitrary distinctions of vice and virtue, honour and treachery, upon which mere rebels base themselves.  The silly sentimentalists of the French Revolution talked of the Rights of Man!  We hate Rights as we hate Wrongs.  We have abolished Right and Wrong.”

The most wonderful thing about miracles is that they sometimes happen.

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