The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.

(Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936), British author. "The Boy," All Things Considered (1908).)

Love-light of Spain?hurrah!
Death-light of Africa!
Don John of Austria
Is riding to the sea.

(Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936), British poet. Lepanto (l. 35-38). . . Oxford Book of Modern Verse, The, 1892-1935. William Butler Yeats, ed. (1936) Oxford University Press.)

A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims permanence, like a dogma. People ask why we have no typical architecture of the modern world, like impressionism in painting. Surely it is obviously because we have not enough dogmas; we cannot bear to see anything in the sky that is solid and enduring, anything in the sky that does not change like the clouds of the sky.

(Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936), British author. "In the Place de la Bastille," Tremendous Trifles (1909).)

The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes
And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,
And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room,
And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom,
And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,

(Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936), British poet. Lepanto (l. 86-90). . . Oxford Book of Modern Verse, The, 1892-1935. William Butler Yeats, ed. (1936) Oxford University Press.)

the green hells of the sea
Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be;
On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,
Splashed with a splended sickness, the sickness of the pearl;

(Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936), British poet. Lepanto (l. 54-57). . . Oxford Book of Modern Verse, The, 1892-1935. William Butler Yeats, ed. (1936) Oxford University Press.)

And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross,

(Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936), British poet. Lepanto (l. 9-11). . . Oxford Book of Modern Verse, The, 1892-1935. William Butler Yeats, ed. (1936) Oxford University Press.)

For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry
And all their songs are sad.

(Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936), British author. Ballad of the White Horse, bk. 2.)

Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf is better than a whole loaf.

(Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936), British author. What's Wrong with the World, ch. 3 (1910).)

Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt.

(Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936), British author. Professor de Worms, in The Man Who Was Thursday, ch. 14 (1908).)

The mere brute pleasure of reading?the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.

(Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936), British author. Quoted in Dudley Barker, G.K. Chesterton (1973).)