“What convinces mankind of a man’s sincerity is this: that every now and then he should go with his principles and against his feelings.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News Oct. 10, 1907, quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #4 (March/April 2025)
“Confucius was the greatest of all agnostics, and he did really make an agnostic civilisation; for ages it has been remarkable for its spirit of order; but not even a lunatic would say it was remarkable for its spirit of reform.”
G.K. Chesterton “Resurrection” in G.K.’s Weekly April 19, 1936 reprinted in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #4 (March/April 2025)
“If you wish to have little spare time, do nothing.”
Anton Chekov, quoted as “Thought du jour” in Globe & Mail May 13, 2003
“If the evil is to be absent, it shall be because we have routed it; not because we have fled from it.”
G.K. Chesterton in Reveille November, 1918, quoted in “Evil and Other Evils” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #6 (July-August 2024)
“IF AN AIRLINE PILOT CAN REMEMBER ALL THE BUTTONS… YOU TOO CAN USE THE TURN SIGNAL LEVER”
Graphic emailed by a friend without attribution
“My taste is for the sensational novel, the detective story, the story about death, robbery, and secret societies; a taste which I share in common with the bulk at least of the male population of this world.”
G.K. Chesterton “Novel-Reading” in T.P.’s Weekly April 7, 1911, reprinted in Gilbert! The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #5 (May/June 2024)
“Normal people generally take normal things for granted; even when they are no longer there.”
G.K. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly March 19, 1932, as header quotation on Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #2 (November/December 2023)
“The terrible danger in the heart of our Society is that the tests are giving way. We are altering, not the evils, but the standards of good by which alone evils can be detected and defined.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News March 25, 1911, quoted in “Evil and Other Evils” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #6 (July-August 2024)