All Things Considered

“One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time.””

— G. K. Chesterton

“The pure modernist is merely a snob; he cannot bear to be a month behind the fashion.””

— G. K. Chesterton

“The men who made the joke saw something deep which they could not express except by something silly and emphatic.””

— G. K. Chesterton

“Another savage trait of our time is the disposition to talk about material substances instead of about ideas. The old civilisation talked about the sin of gluttony or excess. We talk about the Problem of Drink--as if drink could be a problem. When people have come to call the problem of human intemperance the Problem of Drink, and to talk about curing it by attacking the drink traffic, they have reached quite a dim stage of barbarism. The thing is an inverted form of fetish worship; it is no sillier to say that a bottle is a god than to say that a bottle is a devil. The people who talk about the curse of drink will probably progress down that dark hill. In a little while we shall have them calling the practice of wife-beating the Problem of Pokers; the habit of housebreaking will be called the Problem of the Skeleton-Key Trade; and for all I know they may try to prevent forgery by shutting up all the stationers' shops by Act of Parliament.””

— G. K. Chesterton

“the primary paradox that man is superior to all the things around him and yet is at their mercy.””

— G. K. Chesterton

“The joke is generally in the oddest way the truth and yet not the fact.””

— G. K. Chesterton

“What a strange world in which a man cannot remain unique even by taking the trouble to go mad.””

— G. K. Chesterton

“Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed: a passage which some have considered as a prophecy of modern journalism.””

— G. K. Chesterton

“We are in this fairyland on sufferance; it is not for us to quarrel with the conditions under which we enjoy this wild vision of the world.””

— G. K. Chesterton