173
We do not want a church that will move with the world. We want a church that will move the world.
- G.K. Chesterton

172
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried."
- G.K. Chesterton

171
When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?
- G.K. Chesterton
170
The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.
- G.K. Chesterton
168
To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.
- G.K. Chesterton
167
There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.
- G.K. Chesterton
166
The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
- G.K. Chesterton
165
We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.
- G.K. Chesterton
164
The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men.
- G.K. Chesterton
163
A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.
- G.K. Chesterton
162
We do not want, as the newspapers say, a church that will move with the world. We want a church that will move the world.
- G.K. Chesterton
161
The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.
- G.K. Chesterton
159
A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.
- G.K. Chesterton
158
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.
- G.K. Chesterton
157
Gullibility is the key to all adventures. The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life.
- G.K. Chesterton
156
Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal man does not amaze.
- G.K. Chesterton
155
Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
- G.K. Chesterton
154
Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged.
- G.K. Chesterton
153
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 man.
- G.K. Chesterton
152
Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.
- G.K. Chesterton
150
The issue is now clear. It is between light and darkness and everyone must choose his side.
- G.K. Chesterton
148
It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things forbidden.
- G.K. Chesterton
147
Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich.
- G.K. Chesterton
145
No man who worships education has got the best out of education. Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete.
- G.K. Chesterton
144
The world will never starve for want of wonders, but only for want of wonder.
- G.K. Chesterton
143
Those thinkers who cannot believe in any gods often assert that the love of humanity would be in itself sufficient for them; and so, perhaps, it would, if they had it.
- G.K. Chesterton
142
Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.
- G.K. Chesterton
141
I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it.
- G.K. Chesterton
139
Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.
- G.K. Chesterton
138
'My country, right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'
- G.K. Chesterton
137
A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.
- G.K. Chesterton
135
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
- G.K. Chesterton
134
White is not a mere absence of color; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. God paints in many colors; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.
- G.K. Chesterton
132
The mere brute pleasure of reading is the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.
- G.K. Chesterton
131
If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.
- G.K. Chesterton
130
People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.
- G.K. Chesterton
129
It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.
- G.K. Chesterton
128
Jesus promised the disciples three things - that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy and in constant trouble.
- G.K. Chesterton
127
One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.
- G.K. Chesterton
126
Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of 'touching' a man's heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it.
- G.K. Chesterton
125
The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense.
- G.K. Chesterton