The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul.
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.
There is a certain solid use in fools. It is not so much that they rush in where angels fear to tread, but rather that they let out what devils intend to do.
The thing that really is trying to tyrannize through government is Science. The thing that really does use the secular arm is Science. And the creed that really is levying tithes and capturing schools...
The moment sex ceases to be a servant it becomes a tyrant.
The man who said, Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed, put the eulogy quite inadequately and even falsely. The truth Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he sha...
Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity.
Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise s...
Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing – say Pimlico. If we think what is really best for Pimlico we shall find the thread of thought leads to the throne of the mystic and the arbitra...
It does not, in the conventional phrase, accept the conclusions of science, for the simple reason that science has not concluded. To conclude is to shut up; and the man of science is not at all likely...
I do not feel any contempt for an atheist, who is often a man limited and constrained by his own logic to a very sad simplification.
The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being...
It's just because I have picked a little about mystics that I have no use for mystagogues. Real mystics don't hide mysteries, they reveal them. They set a thing up in broad daylight, and when you've s...
There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.
You attacked reason, said Father Brown. It’s bad theology.
The poet will be discontented even in the streets of heaven. The poet is always in revolt. There again, said Syme irritably, what is there poetical about being in revolt? You might as well say that it...
The chicken does not exist only in order to produce another egg. He may also exist to amuse himself, to praise God, and even to suggest ideas to a French dramatist.
Roughly speaking, there are three kinds of people in the world…the division follows lines of real psychological cleavage. I do not offer it lightly. It has been the fruit of more than eighteen minutes...
It was not the house that grew dull, but I that grew dull in it. My wife was better than all women, and yet I could not feel it.
It is quite futile to argue that man is small compared to the cosmos; for man was always small compared to the nearest tree.