Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

He walked by instinct along one white road, on which early birds hopped and sang, and found himself outside a fenced garden. There he saw the sister of Gregory, the girl with the gold-red hair, cutting lilac before breakfast, with the great unconscious gravity of a girl.

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I agree with the realistic Irishman who said he preferred to prophesy after the event.

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The chief object of education is not to learn things but to unlearn things.

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Adventure is the champagne of life, but I prefer my champagne and my adventures dry.

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A good joke is the closest thing we have to divine revelation.

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The determining bulk of Scotch people had heard of golf ever since they had heard of God and often considered the two as of equal importance.

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If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Fall Quotes , Tired Quotes

The true savage is a slave, and is always talking about what he must do; the true civilised man is a free man, and is always talking about what he may do.

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

When it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.

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Man knows that there are in the soul tints more bewildering, more numberless, and more nameless that the colors of an autumn forest....Yet he seriously believes that these things can every one of them , in all their tones and semi-tones, in all their blends and unions, be accurately represented by an arbitrary system of grunts and squeals. He believes that an ordinary civilized stockbroker can really produce out of his own inside noises which denote all the mysteries of memory and all the agonies of desire.

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Be careful how you suggest things to me. For there is in me a madness which goes beyond martyrdom, the madness of an utterly idle man.

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Our society is so abnormal that the normal man never dreams of having the normal occupation of looking after his own property. When he chooses a trade, he chooses one of the ten thousand trades that involve looking after other people's property.

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

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But since he stood for England And knew what England means, Unless you give him bacon You must not give him beans.

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Christianity met the mythological search for romance by being a story and the philosophical search for truth by being a true story.

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Not only is suicide a sin, it is the sin. It is the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an interest in existence; the refusal to take the oath of loyalty to life. The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men. As far as he is concerned he wipes out the world.

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children are simply human beings who are allowed to do what everyone else really desires to do, as for instance, to fly kites, or when seriously wronged to emit prolonged screams for several minutes.

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The world will very soon be divided, unless I am mistaken, into those who still go on explaining our success, and those somewhat more intelligent who are trying to explain our failure.

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People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.

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...a figure of speech can often get into a crack too small for a definition.

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