Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Literary men are being employed to praise a big business man personally, as men used to praise a king. They not only find political reasons for the commercial schemes that they have done for some time past they also find moral defences for the commercial schemers... I do resent the whole age of patronage being revived under such absurd patrons; and all poets becoming court poets, under kings that have taken no oath.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Kings Quotes , Taken Quotes

From the standpoint of any sane person, the present problem of capitalist concentration is not only a question of law, but of criminal law, not to mention criminal lunacy.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Law Quotes , Criminals Quotes

Being 'contented' ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and resigned to living in it; it ought to mean appreciating all there is in such a position.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Moving Quotes , Mean Quotes

When it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Men Quotes , Law Quotes

It was the people who did not care who filled the world with fire and oppression. It was the hands of the indifferent that lit the faggots; it was the hands of the indifferent that turned the rack.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Fire Quotes , Hands Quotes

Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf; is better than a whole loaf.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Mean Quotes , Half Quotes

The fact is that purification and austerity are even more necessary for the appreciation of life and laughter than for anything else. To let no bird fly past unnoticed, to spell the stones and weeds, to have the mind a storehouse of sunset, requires a discipline in pleasure and an education in gratitude.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Weed Quotes , Gratitude Quotes

The vault above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world. Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like the prompt stillness of a sick room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy, because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Christian Quotes , Laughter Quotes

Customs are generally unselfish. Habits are nearly always selfish.

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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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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Men Quotes , Genius Quotes

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down... Why do we laugh? Because it is a grave religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

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I still believe in liberalism today as much as I ever did, but, oh, there was a happy time when I believed in liberals.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Believe Quotes , Happy Times Quotes

When men have come to the edge of a precipice, it is the lover of life who has the spirit to leap backwards, and only the pessimist who continues to believe in progress.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Believe Quotes , Men Quotes

Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Dirty Quotes , Self Quotes

There is nothing harder to learn than painting and nothing which most people take less trouble about learning. An art school is a place where about three people work with feverish energy and everybody else idles to a degree that I should have conceived unattainable by human nature.

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And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Inspirational Quotes , Happiness Quotes

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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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Attitude Quotes , Boredom Quotes

It is the beginning of all true criticism of our time to realize that it has really nothing to say, at the very moment when it has invented so tremendous a trumpet for saying it.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Power Quotes , Criticism Quotes

The humorous look of children is perhaps the most endearing of all the bonds that hold the Cosmos together. Their top-heavy dignity is more touching than any humility; their solemnity gives us more hope for all things than a thousand carnivals of optimism; their large and lustrous eyes seem to hold all the stars in their astonishment; their fascinating absence of nose seems to give to us the most perfect hint of the humour that awaits us in the kingdom of heaven.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Stars Quotes , Children Quotes

Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit.

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