Why do all the clerks and navvies in the railway trains look so sad and tired, so very sad and tired? I will tell you. It is because they know that the train is going right. It is because they know that whatever place they have taken a ticket for that place they will reach. It is because after they have passed Sloane Square they know that the next station must be Victoria, and nothing but Victoria. Oh, their wild rapture! oh, their eyes like stars and their souls again in Eden, if the next station were unaccountably Baker Street!
Gilbert K. ChestertonThose who leave the tradition of truth do not escape into something which we call Freedom. They only escape into something else, which we call Fashion.
Gilbert K. ChestertonDaybreak is a never-ending glory; getting out of bed is a never ending nuisance.
Gilbert K. ChestertonIt is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things forbidden.
Gilbert K. ChestertonThe life of a thinking man will probably be divided into two parts -- the first in which he desires to exterminate modern thinkers, and the second in which he desires to watch them exterminating each other. ... Suppose, for instance, there is an old story and a new skeptic who is skeptical of the story. We have only to wait a little while for a yet newer skeptic who is skeptical of the skeptic. He will probably find the old notion actually a help in his new notion. This process is an abstract truth applying to anything, apart from agreement or disagreement.
Gilbert K. Chesterton