- There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person. [lb. 3]
- We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity. [lb. 5]
- Happiness is a mystery like religion, and should never be rationalised. [lb. 71
- Every man speaks of public opinion, and means by public opinion, public opinion minus his opinion. [lb. 8]
- The obvious truth is that the moment any matter has passed through the human mind it is finally and for ever spoilt for all purposes of science. It has become a thing incurably mysterious and infinite;
this mortal has put on mortality. [lb. 11]
- Charity is the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible. Hope is the power of being cheerful in cir-cumstances which we know to be desperate. [lb. 12]
- Carlyle said that men were mostly fools. Christianity, with a surer and more reverend realism, says that they are all fools. [lb.]
- Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich. The word 'kleptomania' is a vulgar example of what I mean. [lb. 13]
- Honour is a luxury for aristocrats, but it is a necessity for hall-porters. [lb.]
- It is quite proper that a British diplomatist should seek the society of Japanese generals if what he wants is Japanese generals. But if what he wants is people different from himself, he had much better stop at home and discuss religion with the housemaid. [lb. 14]
- To be born into this earth is to be born into uncongenial surroundings, hence to be born into a romance. [lb.]
- A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. [lb. 15]
- The oligarchic character of the modern English commonwealth does not rest, like
many oligarchies, on the cruelty of the rich to the poor. It does not even rest on the kindness of the rich to the poor. It rests on the perennial and unfailing kindness of the poor to the rich. [lb.]
- You will find me drinking gin / In the lowest kind of inn, / Because I am a rigid Vegetarian. [The Logical Vegetarian]
- You have weighed the stars in the balance, and grasped the skies in a
span: I Take, if you must have answer, the word of a common man. [The Pessimist]
- 'What of vile dust?' the preacher said. I Methought the whole world woke. [The Praise of Dust]
- But who hath seen the Grocer / Treat housemaids to his teas / Or crack a bottle of fish sauce I Or stand a man a cheese? [The Song against Grocers]
- Earth will grow worse till men redeem it, / And wars more evil, ere all wars cease. [A Song of Defeat]
- For the men no lords can buy or sell, / They sit not easy when all goes well. [lb.]
- The Nothing scrawled on a five-foot page. [lb.]
- But Higgins is a Heathen, / And to lecture rooms is forced, / Where his aunts, who are not married, / Demand to be divorced. [The Song of the Strange Ascetic]
- I remember my mother, the day that we met, / A thing I shall never entirely forget; / And I toy with the fancy that, young as I am, / I should know her again if we met in a tram. [Songs of Education, 3 'For the Creche']
- Invoke the philologic pen / To show you that a Citizen / Means Something in the City. [lb. 4, 'Citizenship']
- And the Cock I used to know, / Where all good fellows were my friends / A little while ago. [When I came back to Fleet Street]
- The villas and the chapels where /1 learned with little labour I The way to love my fellow-man I And hate my next-door neighbour. [The World State]
- No psychoanalyst has knocked I The bottom out of Bottom's dream. [The Apology of Bottom the Weaver]
- To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it. [The Innocence of Father Brown, 'The Paradise of Thieves']
- Where does a wise man kick a pebble? On the beach. Where does a wise man bide a leaf? In the forest. [lb. 'The Broken Sword']
- Every work of art has one indispensable mark ... the centre of it is simple; however much the fulfilment may he complicated. [lb. 'The Queer Feet']
- Journalism largely consists in saying 'Lord Jones Dead' to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive. [The Wisdom of Father Brown, 'The Purple Wig']
- An artist will betray himself by some sort of sincerity. [The Incredulity of Father Brown, 'The Dagger with Wings']
- If you convey to a woman that something ought to be done, there is always a dreadful danger that she will suddenly do it. [The Secret of Father Brown, 'The Song of the Flying Fish']
- When we apply it, you call it anarchy; and when you apply it, I call it exploita-tion. [The Scandal of Father Brown, 'The Crime of the Communist']
- It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem. [lb. 'The Point of a Pin']
- There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.
[Charles Dickens]
- Circumstances break men's bones; it has never been shown that they break men's optimism. [lb.]
- America has a new delicacy, a coarse, rank refinement. [lb.]
- A man looking at a hippopotamus may sometimes be tempted to regard a hippopotamus as an enormous mistake; but he is also bound to confess that a fortunate inferiority prevents him per-sonally from making such mistakes. [lb.]
- A sober man may become a drunkard through being a coward. A brave man may become a coward through being a drunkard. [lb.]
- When some English moralists write about the importance of having charac-ter, they appear to mean only the impor-tance of having a dull character. [lb.]
- Either criticism is no good at all (a very defensible position) or else criticism means saying about an author the very things that would have made him jump of his boots. [lb.]
- I am afraid of the Patchwork Peril, £h Is all colours and none; I am afraid of bits of Bolshevism and bits of insane individualism and bits of independence in the wrong place, floating hither and thither and colliding with they 'ow not what. [All I Survey, 'On Dependence and Independence']
- It is arguable that we ought to put the State in order before there can really be such a thing as a State school [lb. 'On Education']
- Untfortunately humanitarianism has been mark of an inhuman time. [lb. 'Industrialism']
- A great deal of contemporary criticism reads to me like a man saying: 'Of course I do not like green cheese: I am very fond of brown sherry.' [lb. 'On Jonathan Swift']
- The modern world seems to have no notion of preserving different things side by side, of allowing its proper and proportionate place to each, of saving the whole varied heritage of culture. It has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly every-thing [Ib.I ‘On Love']
- He set out seriously to describe the in-describable. That is the whole business of literature, and it is a hard row to hoe.
'On Literary Cliques']
- No animal ever invented anything so bad as drunkenness - or so good as drink. [All Things Considered, 'Wine When it is Red']
- The rich are the scum of the earth in every country. [The Flying Inn]
- Every politician is emphatically a promis-ing politician. [The Red Moon of Meru]
- The word 'orthodoxy' not only no longer means being right; it practically me"n5 being wrong. [Heretics, Ch. 1J
- A man's opinion on tramcars matters; his opinion on Botticelli matters; his opinion on all things does not matter. [lb.]
- As enunciated today, 'progress' is simply a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative. [lb. 2]