Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Truths turn into dogmas the minute they are disputed.

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Nothing taken for granted; everything received with gratitude; everything passed on with grace.

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There are arguments for atheism, and they do not depend, and never did depend, upon science. They are arguable enough, as far as they go, upon a general survey of life; only it happens to be a superficial survey of life.

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To say that a man is an idealist is merely to say that he is a man.

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Sometimes he even embarrassed the company by phrases suggesting that there was some difference between a Liberal and a Conservative.

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Tradition is only democracy extended through time; it may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who are merely walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father.

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Teach to the young, men's enduring truths, and let the learned amuse themselves with their passing errors.

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Most Americans ... have a sort of permanent intoxication from within, a sort of invisible champagne.

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America is the only country ever founded on a creed.

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What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but absence of self-criticism.

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The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind.

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They have invented a phrase, a phrase that is a black and white contradiction in two words - 'free-love' - as if a lover ever had been, or ever could be, free.

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A man running after a hat is not half so ridiculous as a man running after a woman.

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The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.

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The perils, rewards, punishments, and fulfillments of an adventure must be real, or the adventure is only a shifting and heartless nightmare. If I bet I must be made to pay, or there is no poetry in betting. If I challenge I must be made to fight, or there is no poetry in challenging. If I vow to be faithful I must be cursed when I am unfaithful, or there is no fun vowing.

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I have argued with him on almost every subject in the world, and we have always been on opposite sides, without affectation or animosity... It is necessary to disagree with him as much as I do, in order to admire him as I do; and I am proud of him as a foe even more than as a friend.

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Excuse me if I enjoy myself rather obviously! I don't often have the luck to have a dream like this. It is new to me for a nightmare to lead me to a lobster. It is commonly the other way.

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The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present.

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I doubt if anyone of any tenderness or imagination can see the hand of a child and not be a little frightened of it. It is awful to think of the essential human energy moving so tiny a thing; it is like imagining that human nature could live in the wing of a butterfly or the leaf of a tree. When we look upon lives so human and yet so small... We feel the same kind of obligation to these creatures that a deity might feel...

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The whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a perpetual crisis.

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