Gilbert K. Chesterton

Being 'contented' ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and resigned to living in it; it ought to mean appreciating all there is in such a position.

A stiff apology is a second insult... The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

My country, right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'

Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.

With any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain healthy humiliation.

Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.

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

The 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.

When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.