Let a man walk ten miles steadily on a hot summer's day along a dusty English road, and he will soon discover why beer was invented.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

The simplification of anything is always sensational.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton