Modern toleration is really a tyranny. It is a tyranny because it is a silence.

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

My brother, Cecil Edward Chesterton, was born when I was about five years old; and, after a brief pause, began to argue. He continued to argue to the end. I am glad to think that through all those years we never stopped arguing; and we never once quarreled. Perhaps the principal objection to a quarrel is that it interrupts an argument.

But a somewhat more liberal and sympathetic examination of mankind will convince us that the cross is even older than the gibbet, that voluntary suffering was before and independent of compulsory; and in short that in most important matters a man has always been free to ruin himself if he chose.

Self-denial is the test and definition of self-government.

There are some desires that are not desirable.

Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.