Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say.

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

Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.

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CIVILISATION is not to be judged by the rapidity of communication, but by the value of what is communicated.

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At any innocent tea-table we may easily hear a man say, "Life is not worth living." We regard it as we regard the statement that it is a fine day; nobody thinks that it can possibly have any serious effect on the man or on the world. And yet if that utterance were really believed, the world would stand on its head.

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Every man is important if he loses his life;and every man is funny if he loses his hat and has to run after it.

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

There are two ways of dealing with nonsense in this world. One way is to put nonsense in the right place; as when people put nonsense into nursery rhymes. The other is to put nonsense in the wrong place; as when they put it into educational addresses, psychological criticisms, and complaints against nursery rhymes or other normal amusements of mankind.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Educational Quotes , Two Quotes

What is the good of words if they aren't important enough to quarrel over? Why do we choose one word more than another if there isn't any difference between them? If you called a woman a chimpanzee instead of an angel, wouldn't there be a quarrel about a word? If you're not going to argue about words, what are you going to argue about? Are you going to convey your meaning to me by moving your ears? The Church and the heresies always used to fight about words, because they are the only thing worth fighting about.

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

If you happen to read fairy tales, you will observe that one idea runs from one end of them to the other--the idea that peace and happiness can only exist on some condition. This idea, which is the core of ethics, is the core of the nursery-tales.

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Theology is only thought applied to religion.

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Customs are generally unselfish. Habits are nearly always selfish.

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We are learning to do a great many clever things. The next great task will be to learn not to do them.

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Progress is Providence without God. That is, it is a theory that everything has always perpetually gone right by accident. It is a sort of atheistic optimism, based on an everlasting coincidence far more miraculous than a miracle.

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The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Love Quotes , Appreciation Quotes

A radical generally meant a man who thought he could somehow pull up the root without affecting the flower. A conservative generally meant a man who wanted to conserve everything except his own reason for conserving anything.

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

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

Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all... As long as matters are really hopeful, hope is mere flattery or platitude; it is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength.

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Leisure is being allowed to do nothing.

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All men thirst to confess their crimes more than tired beasts thirst for water; but they naturally object to confessing them while other people, who have also committed the same crimes, sit by and laugh at them.

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

Earnest Freethinkers need not worry themselves so much about the persecutions of the past. Before the Liberal idea is dead or triumphant we shall see wars and persecutions the like of which the world has never seen.

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Employers will give time to eat, time to sleep; they are in terror of a time to think.

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