Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Pride juggles with her toppling towers, They strike the sun and cease, But the firm feet of humility They grip the ground like trees.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Humility Quotes , Pride Quotes

There again," said Syme irritably, "what is there poetical about being in revolt? You might as well say that it is poetical to be sea-sick. Being sick is a revolt. Both being sick and being rebellious may be the wholesome thing on certain desperate occasions; but I'm hanged if I can see why they are poetical...It is things going right," he cried, "that is poetical! Our digestions, for instance, going sacredly and silently right, that is the foundation of all poetry...the most poetical thing in the world is not being sick.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Sea Quotes , Sick Quotes

You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes.

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

Now there is any amount of this nonsense cropping up among American cranks. Anybody may propose to establish coercive Eugenics; or enforce psychoanalysis that is, enforce confession without absolution.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Eugenics Quotes , May Quotes

The great majority of people will go on observing forms that cannot be explained; they will keep Christmas Day with Christmas gifts and Christmas benedictions; they will continue to do it; and some day suddenly wake up and discover why.

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There is one thing which gives radiance to everything. It is the idea of something around the corner.

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The simplification of anything is always sensational.

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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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Catholicism is not ritualism; it may in the future be fighting some sort of superstitious and idolatrous exaggeration of ritual. Catholicism is not asceticism; it has again and again in the past repressed fanatical and cruel exaggerations of asceticism. Catholicism is not mere mysticism; it is even now defending human reason against the mere mysticism of the Pragmatists.

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

There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats Grape-Nuts on principle.

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

The modern city is ugly not because it is a city but because it is not enough of a city, because it is a jungle, because it is confused and anarchic, and surging with selfish and materialistic energies.

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The average woman is at the head of something with which she can do as she likes; the average man has to obey orders and do nothing else.

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Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.

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

We cannot fling ourselves into the blank future; we can only call up images from the past. This being so, the important principle follows, that how many images we have largely depends on how much past we have.

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A really great person is the person who makes every person feel great.

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Political Economy means that everybody except politicians must be economical.

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And my haunting instinct that somehow good was not merely a tool to be used, but a relic to be guarded, like the goods from Crusoe's ship--even that had been the wild whisper of something originally wise, for, according to Christianity, we were indeed the survivors of a wreck, the crew of a golden ship that had gone down before the beginning of the world.

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Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

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Shouldn't atheist have an equal obligation to explain pleasure in a world of randomness. Where does pleasure come from?

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Human anger is a higher thing than what is called divine discontent. For you must be angry with something; but you can be discontented with everything.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Anger Quotes , Divine Quotes