O God of earth and altar, Bow down and hear our cry; Our earthly rulers falter, Our people drift and die; The walls of gold entomb us, The swords of scorn divide; Take not Thy thunder from us, But take away our pride. From all that terror teaches, From lies of tongue and pen; From all the easy speeches That comfort cruel men; From sale and profanation Of honor and the sword; From sleep and from damnation, Deliver us, good Lord! Tie in a living tether The prince and priest and thrall; Bind all our lives together, Smite us and save us all; In ire and exultation Aflame with faith, and free, Lift up a living nation, A single sword to Thee.


Gilbert K. Chesterton

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G. K. CHESTERTON
Half a truth is better than no politics.
G. K. CHESTERTON
A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.
G. K. CHESTERTON
The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglar...
G. K. CHESTERTON
We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified ...
G. K. CHESTERTON
Man knows that there are in the soul tints more bewildering, more numberless, and more nameless that...
G. K. CHESTERTON
All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.
G. K. CHESTERTON
There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it i...
G. K. CHESTERTON
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and do...
G. K. CHESTERTON
Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalized.
G. K. CHESTERTON
One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Do not free the camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.
G. K. CHESTERTON
I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls...
G. K. CHESTERTON
Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
G. K. CHESTERTON
People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a re...
G. K. CHESTERTON
Courage is getting away from death by continually coming within an inch of it.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the mi...
G. K. CHESTERTON
In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a p...
G. K. CHESTERTON
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untr...
G. K. CHESTERTON
Boyhood is a most complex and incomprehensible thing. Even when one has been through it, one does no...
G. K. CHESTERTON
If the barricades went up in our streets and the poor became masters, I think the priests would esca...
G. K. CHESTERTON
Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world...
G. K. CHESTERTON
The artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs. Artists of a large and wholesome vitali...
G. K. CHESTERTON
Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.
G. K. CHESTERTON
The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In thi...
G. K. CHESTERTON
Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about som...
G. K. CHESTERTON
Dogma is actually the only thing that cannot be separated from education. It IS education. A teacher...
G. K. CHESTERTON
The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for ...
G. K. CHESTERTON
The present condition of fame is merely fashion.
G. K. CHESTERTON
When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it. The two things that n...
G. K. CHESTERTON
Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young.
G. K. CHESTERTON
There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes eve...
G. K. CHESTERTON
The old idea that the joke was not good enough for the company has been superseded by the new aristo...
G. K. CHESTERTON
Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the...
G. K. CHESTERTON
To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believi...
G. K. CHESTERTON
Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a m...
G. K. CHESTERTON
Evil comes at leisure like the disease. Good comes in a hurry like the doctor.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
G. K. CHESTERTON
The timidity of the child or the savage is entirely reasonable; they are alarmed at this world, beca...
G. K. CHESTERTON
One may understand the Cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.
G. K. CHESTERTON
The world will never starve for want of wonders, but for want of wonder.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Our civilization has decided that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important...
G. K. CHESTERTON
What we call personality (...) has become the most impersonal thing in the world. Its pale and featu...
G. K. CHESTERTON
The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense...
G. K. CHESTERTON
Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our g...
G. K. CHESTERTON
The worst of work nowadays is what happens to people when they cease to work.
G. K. CHESTERTON
A stiff apology is a second insult. The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has...
G. K. CHESTERTON
Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more ...
G. K. CHESTERTON
The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.
G. K. CHESTERTON
It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.
G. K. CHESTERTON
If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.
G. K. CHESTERTON
O God of earth and altar,
Bow down and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our peop...
G. K. CHESTERTON
We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to ...
G. K. CHESTERTON