When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it. The two things that nearly all of us have thoroughly and really been through are childhood and youth. And though we would not have them back again on any account, we feel that they are both beautiful, because we have drunk them dry.
Gilbert K. ChestertonYou can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.
Gilbert K. ChestertonI am going to hold a pistol to the head of the Modern Man. But I shall not use it to kill himโonly to bring him to life.
Gilbert K. ChestertonHow much happier you would be, how much more of you there would be, if the hammer of a higher God could smash your small cosmos.
Gilbert K. ChestertonTo be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.
Gilbert K. ChestertonWho would condescend to strike down the mere things that he does not fear? Who would debase himself to be merely brave, like any common prizefighter? Who would stoop to be fearless--like a tree? Fight the thing that you fear. You remember the old tale of the English clergyman who gave the last rites to the brigand of Sicily, and how on his death-bed the great robber said, 'I can give you no money, but I can give you advice for a lifetime: your thumb on the blade, and strike upwards.' So I say to you, strike upwards, if you strike at the stars.
Gilbert K. Chesterton