G.K. Chesterton

Unless a man becomes the enemy of an evil, he will not even become its slave but rather its champion.

Strike a glass and it will not endure an instant. Simply do not strike it and it will endure a thousand years.

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

Don't you believe people when they tell you that people sought for a sign, and believed in miracles because they were ignorant. They did it because they were wise, filthily, vilely wise—too wise to eat or sleep or put on their boots with patience.

Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.

Modern intelligence won't accept anything on authority. But it will accept anything without authority.

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

A man cannot think himself out of mental evil; for it is actually the organ of thought that has become diseased, ungovernable, and, as it were, independent. He can only be saved by will or faith. The moment his mere reason moves, it moves in the old circular rut; he will go round and round his logical circle.

Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell. Mercy does not mean not being cruel or sparing people revenge or punishment; it means a plain and positive thing like the sun, which one has either seen or not see.

Once men sang together round a table in chorus; now one man sings alone, for the absurd reason that he can sing better. If our civilization goes on like this, only one man will laugh, because he can laugh better than the rest.

Science must not impose any philosophy, any more than the telephone must tell us what to say.

Great truths can only be forgotten and can never be falsified.