As for the general view that the Church was discredited by the War—they might as well say that the Ark was discredited by the Flood. When the world goes wrong, it proves rather that the Church is right. The Church is justified, not because her children do not sin, but because they do.

— G.K. Chesterton

Ask yourself how many people you have met who grumbled at a thing as incurable, and how many who attacked it as curable? How many people we have heard abuse the British elementary schools, as they would abuse the British climate? How few have we met who realized that British education can be altered, but British weather cannot?... For a thousand that regret compulsory education, where is the hundred, or the ten, or the one, who would repeal compulsory education? … At the beginning of our epoch men talked with equal ease about Reform and Repeal. Now everybody talks about reform; nobody talks about repeal.

— G.K. Chesterton

As long as the vision of heaven is always changing, the vision of earth will be exactly the same. No ideal will remain long enough to be realized, or even partly realized. The modern young man will never change his environment; for he will always change his mind.

— G.K. Chesterton

As regards moral courage, then, it is not so much that the public schools support it feebly, as that they suppress it firmly.

— G.K. Chesterton

As to the doubt of the soul I discover it to be false: a mood not a conclusion. My conclusion is the Faith. Corporate, organized, a personality, teaching. A thing, not a theory. It.

— G.K. Chesterton

A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality.

— G.K. Chesterton

At the back of our brains, so to speak, there was a forgotten blaze or burst of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life was to dig for this submerged sunrise of wonder.

— G.K. Chesterton

Bad is so bad, that we cannot but think good an accident; good is so good, that we feel certain that evil could be explained.

— G.K. Chesterton

Be careful how you suggest things to me. For there is in me a madness which goes beyond martyrdom, the madness of an utterly idle man.

— G.K. Chesterton

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. Furthermore, it may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

— G.K. Chesterton