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

Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters, "Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe," or "Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet." They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complex picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual.

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People that insist upon drinking and driving, are putting the quart before the hearse.

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Wit is a sword; it is meant to make people feel the point as well as see it.

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The fact is that purification and austerity are even more necessary for the appreciation of life and laughter than for anything else. To let no bird fly past unnoticed, to spell the stones and weeds, to have the mind a storehouse of sunset, requires a discipline in pleasure and an education in gratitude.

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A great man knows he is not God, and the greater he is the better he knows it.

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All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive.

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The truth is that it is our attitude towards children that is right, and our attitude towards grown-up people that is wrong.

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Physical science is like simple addition: it is either infallible or it is false.

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Whatever else we may say of our own age, for good or evil, nobody is likely to call it an Age of Reason.

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The hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle. Upon this paradox, we might almost say upon this jest, all the literature of our faith is founded.

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The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.

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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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In our time the blasphemies are threadbare. Pessimism is now patently, as it always was essentially, more commonplace than piety. Profanity is now more than an affectation - it is a convention. The curse against God is Exercise I in the primer of minor poetry.

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We lose our bearings entirely by speaking of the 'lower classes' when we mean humanity minus ourselves.

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The present condition of fame is merely fashion.

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In anything that does cover the whole of your life - in your philosophy and your religion - you must have mirth. If you do not have mirth you will certainly have madness.

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It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense.

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Comforts that were rare among our forefathers are now multiplied in factories and handed out wholesale; and indeed, nobody nowadays, so long as he is content to go without air, space, quiet, decency and good manners, need be without anything whatever that he wants; or at least a reasonably cheap imitation of it.

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Gluttony is a great fault; but we do not necessarily dislike a glutton. We only dislike the glutton when he becomes a gourmet-that is, we only dislike him when he not only wants the best for himself, but knows what is best for other people.

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