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The Frenchman works until he can play. The American works until he can’t play and then thanks the devil, his master, that he is donkey enough to die in harness. But the Englishman, as he has since become, works until he can pretend that he never worked at all.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Gilbert K. Chesterton
Age: 62 †
Born: 1874
Born: May 29
Died: 1936
Died: June 14
Autobiographer
Biographer
Crime Writer
Essayist
Historian
Illustrator
Journalist
Literary Historian
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Philosopher
Beaconsfield
Buckinghamshire
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Gilbert Chesterton
G.K. Chesterton
G. K. C.
Never
Masters
Donkey
Works
Harness
Since
Englishmen
Dies
Pretend
American
Thanks
Become
Master
Frenchman
Play
Devil
Frenchmen
Enough
Worked
Englishman

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The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before.
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I believe in preaching to the converted for I have generally found that the converted do not understand their own religion.
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The test of happiness is gratitude.
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Moral issues are always terribly complex for someone without principles.
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Ingratitude is surely the chief of the intellectual sins of man. He takes his political benefits for granted, just as he takes the skies and the seasons for granted.
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Classic literature is still something that hangs in the air like a song.
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If Christianity should happen to be true - that is to say, if its God is the real God of the universe - then defending it may mean talking about anything and everything.
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When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.
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A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching.
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There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic ignorance.
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When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.
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The triangle of truisms, of father, mother and child, cannot be destroyed it can only destroy those civilizations which disregard it.
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The golden age only comes to men when they have forgotten gold.
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The first two facts which a healthy boy or girl feels about sex are these: first that it is beautiful and then that it is dangerous.
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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 personally from making such mistakes.
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There is only one thing certain and that is that nothing is certain
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America is the only nation in the world that is founded on creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature.
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The Catholic Church is the only thing that saves man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.
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Comradeship is quite a different thing from friendship. . .
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The artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs. Artists of a large and wholesome vitality get rid of their art easily, as they breathe easily or perspire easily. But in artists of less force, the thing becomes a pressure, and produces a definite pain, which is called the artistic temperament.
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