Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

No man must be superior to the things that are common to men.... Not only are we all in the same boat, but we are all seasick.

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

Instead of the machine being a giant to which the man is the pygmy, we must at last reverse the proportions until man is a giant to whom the machine is the toy.

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

I would rather a boy learnt in the roughest school the courage to hit a politician, or gained in the hardest school the learning to refute him - rather than that he should gain in the most enlightened school the cunning to copy him.

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

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Family is the theatre of the spiritual drama, the place where things happen, especially the things that matter.

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Every true artist does feel, consciously or unconsciously, that he is touching transcendental truths; that his images are shadows of things seen through the veil. In other words, the natural mystic does know that there is something there, something behind the clouds or within the trees; but he believes that the pursuit of beauty is the way to find it; that imagination is a sort of incantation that can call it up.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Believe Quotes , Artist Quotes

The first fact about the celebration of a birthday is that it is a way of affirming defiantly, and even flamboyantly, that it is a good thing to be alive.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Alive Quotes , Way Quotes

Science is the study of the admitted laws of existence, which cannot prove a universal negative about whether those laws could ever be suspended by something admittedly above them. It is as if we were to say that a lawyer was so deeply learned in the American Constitution that he knew there could never be a revolution in America.

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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

When you with velvets mantled o'er, Defy December's tempests frore, Oh! spare one garment from your store, To clothe the poor at Christmas.

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The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

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[Paradox is] truth standing on its head to gain attention.

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When we reverence anything in the mature, it is their virtues or their wisdom, and this is an easy matter. But we reverence the faults and follies of children. We should probably come considerably nearer to the true conception of things if we treated all grown-up persons, of all titles and types, with precisely that dark affection and dazed respect with which we treat the infantile limitations.

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A businessman is the only man who is forever apologizing for his occupation.

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Once abolish the God, and the Government becomes the God.

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Laughter has something in it common with the ancient words of faith and inspiration; it unfreezes pride and unwinds secrecy; it makes people forget themselves in the presence of something greater than themselves.

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A mystic is a man who separates heaven and earth even if he enjoys them both.

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We talk of wild animals but man is the only wild animal. It is man that has broken out. All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of the tribe or type.

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The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Family Quotes , Freedom Quotes

I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Book Quotes , Writing Quotes