Owls and Orchids

G. K. Chesterton – or Gilbert Keith Chesterton, to give him his full name – was born on this day in 1874. What better reason could one want for proffering ten of his finest one-liners?

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person. – Heretics (1905) 

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. – Alarms and Discursions (1910) 

Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable. – Illustrated London News (1909) 

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it. – A Short History of England (1917) 

Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction … for fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it. – The…