Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

A man must be prepared not only to be a martyr, but to be a fool. It is absurd to say that a man is ready to toil and die for his convictions if he is not even ready to wear a wreathe around his head for them.

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I have myself a poetical enthusiasm for pigs, and the paradise of my fancy is one where pigs have wings. But it is only men, especially wise men, who discuss whether pigs can fly; we have no particular proof that pigs ever discuss it.

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The Mass is not only about God becoming man, it is about Man becoming more himself.

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When people talk as if the Crusades were nothing more than an aggressive raid against Islam, they seem to forget in the strangest way that Islam itself was only an aggressive raid against the old and ordered civilization in these parts. I do not say it in mere hostility to the religion of Mahomet; I am fully conscious of many values and virtues in it; but certainly it was Islam that was the invasion and Christendom that was the thing invaded.

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Poets do not go mad, but chess players do.

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What life and death may be to a turkey is not my business; but the soul of Scrooge and the body of Cratchit are my business.

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Boys like romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales-because they find them romantic.

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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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Latter-day scepticism is fond of calling itself progressive; but scepticism is really reactionary. Scepticism goes back; it attempts to unsettle what has already been settled. Instead of trying to break up new fields with its plough, it simply tries to break up the plough.

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And though St. John saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators.

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We actually love ourselves more than we love joy.

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The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.

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

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The Party System was founded on one national notion of fair play. It was the notion that folly and futility should be fairly divided between both sides.

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Sometimes he even embarrassed the company by phrases suggesting that there was some difference between a Liberal and a Conservative.

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The Byzantines hammered away at their hard and orthodox symbols, because they could not be in a mood to believe that men could take a hint. The moderns drag out into lengths and reels of extravagance their new orthodoxy of being unorthodox, because they also cannot give a hint -- or take a hint. Yet all perfect and well-poised art is really a hint.

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It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never gotten tired of making them

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Surprise is the secret of joy.

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Over-civilization and barbarism are within an inch of each other. And a mark of both is the power of medicine-men.

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