The one created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the light of which we look at everything. Like the sun at noonday, mysticism explains everything else by the blaze of...

The objection to fairy stories is that they tell children there are dragons, but children have always known there are dragons. Fairy stories tell children that dragons can be killed.

But the truth is that there is no more conscious inconsistency between the humility of a Christian and the rapacity of a Christian than there is between the humility of a lover and the rapacity...

If we are calm,” replied the policeman, “it is the calm of organized resistance.””Eh?” said Syme, staring.”The soldier must be calm in the thick of the battle,” pursued the policeman. “The composure of an army...

St Thomas (Aqinas) loved books and lived on books… When asked for what he thanked God most, he answered simply, ‘I have understood every page I ever read’.

A man must love a thing very much if he practices it without any hope of fame or money, but even practice it without any hope of doing it well. Such a man must love...

Monotony has nothing to do with a place; monotony, either in its sensation or its infliction, is simply the quality of a person. There are no dreary sights; there are only dreary sight seers.

If grass grows and withers, it can only mean that it is part of a greater thing, which is even more real; not that the grass is less real than it looks. St. Thomas (Aquinas)...

A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true.

The pagan, or rational, virtues are such things as justice and temperance, and Christianity has adopted them. The three mystical virtues which Christianity has not adopted, but invented, are faith, hope and charity. Now… the...

There is only one thing which is generally safe from plagiarism — self-denial.

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 the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen...

I would look at the first chapter of any new novel as a final test of its merits. If there was a murdered man under the sofa in the first chapter, I read the story....

Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.

In other words, we may, by fixing our attention almost fiercely on the facts actually before us, force them to turn into adventures; force them to give up their meaning and fulfill their mysterious purpose.

The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.

The pessimists believe that the cosmos is a clock that is running down; the progressives believe it is a clock that they themselves are winding up. But I happen to believe that the world is...

Father Brown got to his feet, putting his hands behind him. ‘Odd, isn’t it,’ he said, ‘that a thief and a vagabond should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and...

Democracy is reproached with saying that the majority is always right. But progress says that the minority is always right.

Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long as you have one good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem”.

The word “good” has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good...

We are perishing for lack of wonder, not for lack of wonders.

It [feminism] is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands.

The place that the shepherds found was not an academy or an abstract republic, it was not a place of myths allegorised or dissected or explained or explained away. It was a place of dreams...

One would think it would be most unwise in a man to be afraid of a skeleton, since Nature has set curious and quite insuperable obstacles to his running away from it.

In the specially Christian case we have to react against the heavy bias of fatigue. It is almost impossible to make the facts vivid, because the facts are familiar; and for fallen men it is...

I beseech you, little brothers, that you be as wise as brother Daisy and brother dandelion; for never do they lie awake thinking of tomorrow, yet they have gold crowns like kings and emperors or...

He thought his detective brain as good as the criminal’s, which was true. But he fully realised the disadvantage. “The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic,” he said with a sour...

I was waiting for you,” said Gregory. “Might I have a moment’s conversation?””Certainly. About what?” asked Syme in a sort of weak wonder.Gregory struck out with his stick at the lamp-post, and then at the...

For when once people have begun to believe that prosperity is the reward of virtue, their next calamity is obvious. If prosperity is regarded as the reward of virtue it will be regarded as the...

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

His soul swayed in a vertigo of moral indecision. He had only to snap the thread of a rash vow made to a villainous society, and all his life could be as open and sunny...

When modern sociologists talk of the necessity of accommodating one’s self to the trend of the time, they forget that the trend of the time at its best consists entirely of people who will not...

Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox; that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home.

[The materialist] thinks me a slave because I am not allowed to believe in determinism. I think [the materialist] a slave because he is not allowed to believe in fairies.

If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

Even the moon is only poetical because there is a man in the moon.

Internationalism is in any case hostile to democracy….The only purely popular government is local, and founded on local knowledge. The citizens can rule the city because they know the city; but it will always be...

Buddhism seeks after God with the largest conception it can find, the all-producing and all-absorbing One; Christianity seeks after God with the most elementary passion it can find—the craving for a father, the hunger that...

Fairy tales don’t tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed.

You are my only friend in the world, and I want to talk to you. Or, perhaps, be silent with you.

Nobody can understand the greatness of the thirteenth century, who does not realize that it was a great growth of new things produced by a living thing. In that sense it was really bolder and...

We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being...

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

We read a good novel not in order to know more people, but in order to know fewer. Instead of the humming swarm of human beings, relatives, customers, servants, postmen, afternoon callers, tradesmen, strangers who...

The man who cannot believe his senses, and the man who cannot believe anything else, are both insane, but their insanity is proved not by any error in their argument, but by the manifest mistake...

The obvious effect of frivolous divorce will be frivolous marriage. If people can be separated for no reason they will feel it all the easier to be united for no reason.

I am not good at deception,’ said Tuesday gloomily, flushing.Right, my boy, right,’ said the President with a ponderous heartiness, ‘You aren’t good at anything.

In the heated idleness of youth we were all rather inclined to quarrel with the implication of that proverb which says that a rolling stone gathers no moss. We were inclined to ask, “Who wants...

According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in making it, He set it free. God had written, not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play...