Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

For the mass of men the idea of artistic creation can only be expressed by an idea unpopular in present discussions - the idea of property... Property is merely the art of the democracy... One would think, to hear people talk, that the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers were on the side of property. But obviously they are the enemies of property; because they are enemies of their own limitations.

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It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch.

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If it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly. (on not perfectionism to put things off) .

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But I was frightfully fond of the universe and wanted to address it by a diminutive. I often did so; and it never seemed to mind.

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Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers.

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One can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place.

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Progress is Providence without God. That is, it is a theory that everything has always perpetually gone right by accident. It is a sort of atheistic optimism, based on an everlasting coincidence far more miraculous than a miracle.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Atheist Quotes , Optimism Quotes

Your next-door neighbor is not a man; he is an environment. He is the barking of a dog; he is the noise of a piano; he is a dispute about a party wall; he is drains that are worse than yours, or roses that are better than yours.

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Like every book I never wrote, it is by far the best book I have ever written.

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There are two kinds of rebellion. The first is one in which the slave demands something that the tyrant has got. The second is one in which he demands something that the tyrant has not got.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Tyrants Quotes , Two Quotes

It is not only possible to say a great deal in praise of play; it is really possible to say the highest things in praise of it. It might reasonably be maintained that the true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.

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Suppose, my dear Chadd, suppose it is we who are the idiots because we are not afraid of devils in the dark?

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Architecture is the alphabet of giants; it is the largest set of symbols ever made to meet the eyes of men. A tower stands up like a sort of simplified stature, of much more than heroic size.

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

It is the beginning of all true criticism of our time to realize that it has really nothing to say, at the very moment when it has invented so tremendous a trumpet for saying it.

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Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain.

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The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more.

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

It is ludicrous to suppose that the more sceptical we are the more we see good in everything. It is clear that the more we are certain what good is, the more we shall see good in everything.

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The noble temptation to see too much in everything.

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Tolerance is the virtue of people who do not believe in anything.

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