Gilbert K. Chesterton

The only defensible war is a war of defense.

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.

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.

The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.

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

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

I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.

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

Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare.

Half a truth is better than no politics.

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.

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.

To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.

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.

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.