Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

The outer ring of Christianity is a rigid guard of ethical abnegations and professional priests; but inside that inhuman guard you will find the old human life dancing like children and drinking wine like men; for Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom. But in the modern philosophy the case is opposite; it is its outer ring that is obviously artistic and emancipated; its despair is within.

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

The last few decades have been marked by a special cultivation of the romance of the future. We seem to have made up our minds to misunderstand what has happened; and we turn, with a sort of relief, to stating what will happen-which is apparently much easier...The modern mind is forced towards the future by a certain sense of fatigue, not unmixed with terror, with which it regards the past.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Learning Quotes , Past Quotes

Mr. McCabe thinks that I am not serious but only funny, because Mr. McCabe thinks that funny is the opposite of serious. Funny is the opposite of not funny and nothing else.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Opposites Quotes

The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

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Any one thinking of the Holy Child as born in December would mean by it exactly what we mean by it; that Christ is not merely a summer sun of the prosperous but a winter fire for the unfortunate.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Christmas Quotes , Summer 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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The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.

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Humility is the luxurious art of reducing ourselves to a point, not to a small thing or a large one, but to a thing with no size at all, so that to it all the cosmic things are what they really are - of immeasurable stature.

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Mysticism keeps mankind sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Long Quotes , Spirituality Quotes

A nation is not going mad when it does extravagant things, so long as it does them in an extravagant spirit. But whenever we see things done wildly, but taken tamely, then the State is growing insane.

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

Only friendliness produces friendship. And we must look far deeper into the soul of man for the thing that produces friendliness.

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It is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin, a creature who does not exist. It is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he didn't.

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La mejor prueba de la cultura y la liberalidad de un hombre es su actitud ante las cosas que nunca sucedieron.

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Our civilization has decided that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But 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 , Funny Quotes , Humorous Quotes

ONCE remove the old arena of theological quarrels, and you will throw open the whole world to the most horrible, the most hopeless, the most endless, the most truly interminable quarrels; the untheological quarrels.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , World Quotes , Arena Quotes

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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You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.

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People talk of the pathos and failure of plain women; but it is a more terrible thing that a beautiful woman may succeed in everything but womanhood.

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When belief in God becomes difficult, the tendency is to turn away from Him; but in heaven's name to what?

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All but the hard hearted man must be torn with pity for this pathetic dilemma of the rich man, who has to keep the poor man just stout enough to do the work and just thin enough to have to do it.

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