Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity, which means charity to the deserving poor; but charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them.

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

Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long as you have one good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem".

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Spiritual Quotes , Women Quotes

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.

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You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world.

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I defy anybody to say what are the rights of a citizen, if they do not include the control of his own diet in relation to his own health.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Rights Quotes , Citizens Quotes

Contemporary society has become dry, not for lack of wonders but for lack of wonder.

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If you'd take your head home and boil it for a turnip it might be useful. I can't say. But it might.

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Every time a man knocks on a brothel door, he is really knocking for God

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Nothing can ever overcome that one enormous sex (female) superiority that even the male child is born closer to his mother than to his father.

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Architecture approaches nearer than any other art to being irrevocable because it is so difficult to get rid of.

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He is only a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of the Conservative.

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There is no better test of a man's ultimate chivalry and integrity than how he behaves when he is wrong... A stiff apology is a second insult.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Integrity Quotes , Apology Quotes

Instead of looking at books and pictures about the New Testament I looked at the New Testament. There I found an account, not in the least of a person with his hair parted in the middle or his hands clasped in appeal, but of an extraordinary being with lips of thunder and acts of lurid decision, flinging down tables, casting out devils, passing with the wild secrecy of the wind from mountain isolation to a sort of dreadful demagogy; a being who often acted like an angry god — and always like a god.

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America is the only nation in the world that is founded on creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , America Quotes , Independence Quotes

Surely we cannot take an open question like the supernatural and shut it with a bang, turning the key of the madhouse on all the mystics of history. You cannot take the region of the unknown and calmly say that, though you know nothing about it, you know all the gates are locked. We do not know enough about the unknown to know that it is unknowable.

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Coincidence is a spiritual pun.

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If there is one thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals, it is the modern strengthening of minor morals.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Morality Quotes , Modern Quotes

We have passed the age of the demagogue, the man who has little to say and says it loud. We have come to the age of the mystagogue or don, the man who has nothing to say, but says it softly and impressively in an indistinct whisper.

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

In the end it will not matter to us whether we wrote well or ill; whether we fought with flails or reeds. It will matter to us greatly on what side we fought.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Matter Quotes , Sides Quotes

Take not thy thunder from us, but take away our pride.

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