G.K. Chesterton

"Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances that we know to be desperate."

"That is the one eternal education: to be sure enough that something is true that you dare to tell it to a child."

"Humor can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle."

"As regards moral courage, then, it is not so much that the public schools support it feebly, as that they suppress it firmly."

"Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid."

"To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless."

"No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete."

"Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity."

"There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable."

"But there is in everything a reasonable division of labour. I have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it."

"Science must not impose any philosophy, any more than the telephone must tell us what to say."

"All we know of the Missing Link is that he is missing - and he won't be missed either."

"The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people."

"To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless."

"Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed."

"I am not absentminded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else."

"Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously."

"Romance is the deepest thing in life. It is deeper than reality."

"We fear men so much, because we fear God so little. One fear cures another. When man's terror scares you, turn your thoughts to the wrath of God."

"I am not absentminded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else."