From an interview with Fr. Paul Scalia (the son of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia):

Q: What writers influence you and why?

A: Probably the writer who has influenced me the most is G.K. Chesterton because he can turn a phrase. His writing is fun. Ronald Knox, his writing is excellent. I think with both of them there is both a down-to-earthness about them. There is a levity and there is a precision.

"Fr. Paul Scalia Talks New Book"

[...] the fundamental things in a man are not the things he explains, but rather the things he forgets to explain.

-The Superstition of Divorce (1920)

A dream can commonly be described as possessing an utter discordance of incident combined with a curious unity of mood; everything changes but the dreamer. It may begin with anything and end with anything, but if the dreamer is sad at the end he will be sad as if by prescience at the beginning; if he is cheerful at the beginning he will be cheerful if the stars fail. A Midsummer Night's Dream has in a most singular degree effected this difficult, this almost desperate subtlety. The events in the wandering wood are in themselves, and regarded as in broad daylight, not merely melancholy but bitterly cruel and ignominious. But yet by the spreading of an atmosphere as magic as the fog of Puck, Shakespeare contrives to make the whole matter mysteriously hilarious while it is palpably tragic, and mysteriously charitable, while it is in itself cynical [...] The creation of a brooding sentiment like this, a sentiment not merely independent of but actually opposed to the events, is a much greater triumph of art than the creation of the character of Othello.

-Chesterton on Shakespeare (1971)

[..] men like Chaucer and Langland may have supported Wycliffe to some extent in practice, and then repudiated him more completely in theory, for a particular reason of their own. The reason was (odd as it will sound in modern ears) that they supported him when he was right and repudiated him when he was wrong.

Wycliffe was only one example of a man who yields to a temptation, which few reformers have been sufficiently clear-headed to resist. He became so irritated with the fact that the Idea was badly carried out in practice, that at last he was weak enough to turn and attack the Idea in theory. [...] But there is here some haunting temptation which perpetually betrays reformers. It betrays the reformers of modern as of medieval times [...] The logical, or rather illogical, process is perfectly simple and perfectly familiar. A man sets out to distribute Milk to mothers or families or the whole community. He very soon discovers that distribution is not so easy as it looks. Before long he is perfectly familiar with the fact of people intercepting milk, stealing milk, making a corner in milk, adulterating milk, poisoning milk. He is very naturally in a rage, which verges on a revolutionary rage; nor is he wrong in proposing even precipitate and violent action against those who swindle about milk or poison milk. But there always comes a time when he is tempted to turn, in a towering passion, and say, 'There shall be no Milk.' That is what happened at the Reformation. That is what happens in nearly every revolution.

-Chaucer (1932)

But civilisation is to be tested not so much by the dexterity of inventions as by the worth of what is invented. Many of the instruments of torture in the Tower of London display great dexterity of invention. Civilisation is not to be judged by the rapidity of communication, but by the value of what is communicated. I can send to my next-door neighbour the message- "You are an ass." I have not greatly advanced in civilisation merely because I can send the same intelligent message to a man in Australia.

-February 16, 1907, Illustrated London News

Our need for rules does not arise from the smallness of our intellects, but from the greatness of our task. Discipline is not necessary for things that are slow and safe; but discipline is necessary for things that are swift and dangerous. We do not need a map for a stroll; but we do need a map for a raid. Now Western democracy is certainly engaged in a raid, a raid on the New Jerusalem. We are trying to do right: one of the wildest perils. We are trying to bring political equity on earth; to materialise an almost incredible justice [...] The thing has nothing to do with the freedom of the mind. Cervantes at Lepanto would have obeyed orders; surely not because he wore blinkers, but because Cervantes knew that there are twenty ways of criticising a battle, but only one way of winning it. And I do not believe for a moment that the ordinary man only obeys social rules because he is too stupid to see the alternative; I believe he obeys them because he feels, though he cannot perhaps express the fact, that they are the only way of having a rapid and reasonable human activity.

-September 28, 1907, Daily News

Pride consists in a man making his personality the only test, instead of making the truth the test.  It is not pride to wish to do well, or even to look well, according to a real test.  It is pride to think that a thing looks ill, because it does not look like something characteristic of oneself.  Now in the general clouding of clear and abstract standards, there is a real tendency today for a young man (and even possibly a young woman) to fall back on that personal test, simply for lack of any trustworthy impersonal test.  No standard being sufficiently secure for the self to be moulded to suit it, all standards may be moulded to suit the self.  But the self as a self is a very small thing and something very like an accident.  Hence arises a new kind of narrowness; which exists especially in those who boast of breadth.  The sceptic feels himself too large to measure life by the largest things; and ends by measuring it by the smallest thing of all. 

-The Common Man (1950)

"...ambition narrows as the mind expands."

But youth is always ambitious and universal; mature work exhibits more of individuality, more of the special type and colour of work which a man is destined to do. Youth is universal, but not individual. The genius who begins life with a very genuine and sincere doubt whether he is meant to be an exquisite and idolised violinist, or the most powerful and eloquent Prime Minister of modern times, does at last end by making the discovery that there is, after all, one thing, possibly a certain style of illustrating Nursery Rhymes, which he can really do better than any one else. This was what happened to Browning; like every one else, he had to discover first the universe, and then humanity, and at last himself. With him, as with all others, the great paradox and the great definition of life was this, that the ambition narrows as the mind expands.

-Robert Browning (1903)

We are all somewhat wearily aware that some Modern Churchman call such continuous change progress;  as when we remark that a corpse crawling with worms has an increased vitality; or that a snow-man, slowly turning into a puddle, is purifying itself of its accretions.

-The Well and the Shallows (1935)

"What do you think about spirits?"
"Never touch 'em," said the Colonel. "Sound port never hurt anybody."
"I mean the other sort," said Pierce. "Things like ghosts and all that."
"I don't know," said Owen Hood. "The Greek for it is agnosticism. The Latin for it is ignorance. But have you really been dealing with ghosts and spirits down at poor White's parsonage?"
"I don't know," said Pierce gravely.
"You don't mean you really think you saw something!" cried Hood sharply.
"There goes the agnostic!" said Pierce with a rather weary smile. "The minute the agnostic hears a bit of real agnosticism he shrieks out that it's superstition."

-Tales of the Long Bow (1925)

But do not be kind merely to exhibit your own kindness; for that is an insult that is never forgiven. When you are helping people, pray for a spirit of humility; I had almost said, when you are helping people, pray for an appearance of helplessness.

-Sidelights (1932)

An interesting article on Distributism, the (admittedly awkward and to an extent misleading) name of the economic philosophy of Chesterton.