Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Only men to whom the family is sacred will ever have a standard or a status by which to criticize the State. They alone can appeal to something more holy than the gods of the city.

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

It is unpardonable conceit not to laugh at your own jokes. Joking is undignified; that is why it is so good for one's soul. Do not fancy you can be a detached wit and avoid being a buffoon; you cannot. If you are the Court Jester you must be the Court Fool.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Laughing Quotes , Soul Quotes

They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my childlike faith in practical politics.

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

A fairly clear line separated advertisement from art. ... The first effect of the triumph of the capitalist (if we allow him to triumph) will be that that line of demarcation will entirely disappear. There will be no art that might not just as well be advertisement.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Art Quotes , Triumph Quotes

When "everyone knows" that something is so, it is always more interesting and often illuminating to assumeexactly the opposite, and to see where that leads.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Opposites Quotes , Interesting Quotes

People in high life are hardened to the wants and distresses of mankind as surgeons are to their bodily pains.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Pain Quotes , People 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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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Courage Quotes , School Quotes

Journalism only tells us what men are doing; it is fiction that tells us what they are thinking, and still more what they are feeling. If a new scientific theory finds the soul of a man in his dreams, at least it ought not to leave out his day-dreams. And all fiction is only a diary of day-dreams instead of days. And this profound preoccupation of men's minds with certain things always eventually has an effect even on the external expression of the age.

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

It seems to me,' said the other, 'That you are simply seeking a pretext to insult the Marquis.' By George!' said Syme facing round and looking at him, 'What a clever chap you are!

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Clever Quotes , Insult Quotes

If, therefore, nonsense is really to be the literature of the future, it must have its own version of the Cosmos to offer; the world must not only be tragic, romantic, and religious, it must be nonsensical also.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Religious Quotes , Cosmos Quotes

[Consider] a fence or gate erected across a road] The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

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A great curse has fallen upon modern life with the discovery of the vastness of the word Education.

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[Fairy tales] make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.

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

As an explanation of the world materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has the quality of a madman's arguments; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out.

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The poor complain that they are governed badly. The rich complain that they are governed at all.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Complaining Quotes , Rich Quotes

The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really this proposition: that nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover she is a step-mother.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Mother Quotes , Essence Quotes

The center of every man's existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like a toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel.

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Nothing is so remote from us as the thing which is not old enough to be history and not new enough to be news.

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The average man votes below himself; he votes with half a mind or a hundredth part of one. A man ought to vote with the whole of himself, as he worships or gets married. A man ought to vote with his head and heart, his soul and stomach, his eye for faces and his ear for music; also (when sufficiently provoked) with his hands and feet. If he has ever seen a fine sunset, the crimson color of it should creep into his vote. The question is not so much whether only a minority of the electorate votes. The point is that only a minority of the voter votes.

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

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.

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