Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Mankind is not a tribe of animals to which we owe compassion. Mankind is a club to which we owe our subscription.

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Gratitude produced the most purely joyful moments that have been known to man.

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Suppose, my dear Chadd, suppose it is we who are the idiots because we are not afraid of devils in the dark?

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These are the things which might conceivably and truly make men forgive their enemies. We can only turn hate to love by understanding what are the things that men have loved; nor is it necessary to ask men to hate their loves in order to love one another. Just as two grocers are most likely to be reconciled when they remember for a moment that they are two fathers, so two nationals are most likely to be reconciled when they remember (if only for a moment) that they are two patriots.

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My attitude toward progress has passed from antagonism to boredom. I have long ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday.

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Men spoke much in my boyhood about restricted or ruined men of genius: and it was common to say that many a man was a Great Might-Have-Been. To me it's a more solid and startling fact that any man in the street is a Great Might-Not-Have-Been.

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You cannot love a thing without wanting to fight for it.

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When once you have got hold of a vulgar joke, you may be certain that you have got hold of a subtle and spiritual idea.

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The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.

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Any man who preaches real love is bound to beget hate. It is as true of democratic fraternity as a divine love; sham love ends in compromise and common philosophy; but real love has always ended in bloodshed.

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Our digestions, going sacredly and silently right, that is the foundation of all poetry.

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No man can be merry unless he is serious.

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Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil.

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It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.

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If we want to give poor people soap we must set out deliberately to give them luxuries. If we will not make them rich enough to be clean, then empathically we must do what we did with the saints. We must reverence them for being dirty.

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Now there is any amount of this nonsense cropping up among American cranks. Anybody may propose to establish coercive Eugenics; or enforce psychoanalysis that is, enforce confession without absolution.

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I do not feel any contempt for an atheist, who is often a man limited and constrained by his own logic to a very sad simplification.

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I do not believe that any human being is fundamentally happier for being finally lost in a crowd, even if it is called a crowd of comrades.

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'As you have made your bed, so you must lie on it'; which again is simply a lie. If I have made my bed uncomfortable, please God I will make it again.

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Soldiers have many faults, but they have one redeeming merit; they are never worshippers of force. Soldiers more than any other men are taught severely and systematically that might is not right. The fact is obvious. The might is in the hundred men who obey. The right (or what is held to be right) is in the one man who commands them.

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