Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

In dealing with the arrogant asserter of doubt, it is not the right method to tell him to stop doubting. It is rather the right method to tell him to go on doubting, to doubt a little more, to doubt every day newer and wilder things in the universe, until at last, by some strange enlightenment, he may begin to doubt himself.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Doubt Quotes , Enlightenment Quotes

[Capitalism is] that commercial system in which supply immediately answers to demand, and in which everybody seems to be thoroughly dissatisfied and unable to get anything he wants.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Answers Quotes , Demand Quotes

For us who live in cities Nature is not natural. Nature is supernatural. Just as monks watched and strove to get a glimpse of heaven, so we watch and strive to get a glimpse of earth. It is as if men had cake and wine every day but were sometimes allowed common bread.

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It is a mathematical fact that if a line be not perfectly directed towards a point, it will actually go further away from it as it comes nearer to it.

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There is no such thing as education. The thing is merely a loose phrase for the passing on to others of whatever truth or virtue we happen to have ourselves. It is typical of our time that the more doubtful we are about the value of philosophy, the more certain we are about the value of education. That is to say, the more doubtful we are about whether we have any truth, the more certain we are (apparently) that we can teach it to our children.

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God is not a symbol of goodness; goodness is a symbol of God

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Man is not merely an evolution but rather a revolution.

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One pleasure attached to growing older is that many things seem to be growing younger; growing fresher and more lively than we once supposed them to be.

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Contemporary society has become dry, not for lack of wonders but for lack of wonder.

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The humorous look of children is perhaps the most endearing of all the bonds that hold the Cosmos together.

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A man's minor actions and arrangements ought to be free, flexible, creative; the things that should be unchangeable are his principles, his ideals. But with us the reverse is true; our views change constantly; but our lunch does not change. Now, I should like men to have strong and rooted conceptions, but as for their lunch, let them have it sometimes in the garden, sometimes in bed, sometimes on the roof, sometimes in the top of a tree. Let them argue from the same first principles, but let them do it in a bed, or a boat, or a balloon.

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

The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.

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There is only one thing that it requires real courage to say, and that is a truism.

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The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice.

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Morality did not begin by one man saying to another, "I will not hit you if you do not hit me"; there is no trace of such a transaction. There IS a trace of both men having said, "We must not hit each other in the holy place.

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There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.

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There is a corollary to the conception of being too proud to fight. It is that the humble have to do most of the fighting.

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Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young.

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By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece.

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Be careful how you suggest things to me. For there is in me a madness which goes beyond martyrdom, the madness of an utterly idle man.

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