Quote #143

The things that happen here do not seem to mean anything; they mean something somewhere else. Somewhere else retribution will come on the real offender. Here it often seems to fall on the wrong person.

More from Gilbert Keith Chesterton

  1. Very few reputations are gained by unsullied virtue.
  2. To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.
  3. One can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place.
  4. Journalism largely consists in saying 'Lord Jones Dead' to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.
  5. Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil.
  6. If you convey to a woman that something ought to be done, there is always a dreadful danger that she will suddenly do it.
  7. Silver is sometimes more valuable than gold, that is, in large quantities.
  8. It is a quaint comment on the notion that the English are practical and the French merely visionary, that we were rebels in arts while they…

All Gilbert Keith Chesterton quotes