Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

Being "contented" ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and resigned to living in it; it ought to mean appreciating all there is in such a position.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

Coincidences are spiritual puns.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf; is better than a whole loaf.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kid of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

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

Half a truth is better than no politics.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalised.
Gilbert K. Chesterton