The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce variety and uncompromising divergences of menโฆIn a large community, we can choose our companions. In a small community, our companions are chosen for us. Thus in all extensive and highly civilized society groups come into existence founded upon sympathy, and shut out the real world more sharply than the gates of a monastery. There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing which is really narrow is the clique.
Gilbert K. ChestertonCorrectitude implies nowadays a formal or fastidious use of words; and what is wanted is not so much the correct as the living use of words. It is the memory of the meaning of a word which is the life of the word.
Gilbert K. ChestertonThe object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.
Gilbert K. ChestertonTen thousand women marched through the streets shouting, 'We will not be dictated to,' and went off and became stenographers.
Gilbert K. ChestertonNo sceptical philosopher can ask any questions that may not equally be asked by a tired child on a hot afternoon.
Gilbert K. ChestertonIt has always been one of my unclerical sermons to myself, that that remark which Peter made on seeing the vision of a single hour, ought to be made by us all, in contemplating every panoramic change in the long Vision we call life... "It is good for us to be here - it is good for us to be here", repeating itself eternally.
Gilbert K. ChestertonIt might reasonably be maintained that the true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground. To be at last in such secure innocence that one can juggle with the universe and the stars, to be so good that one can treat everything as a joke - that may be, perhaps, the real end and final holiday of human souls.
Gilbert K. Chesterton