Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters, "Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe," or "Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet." They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complex picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Editors Quotes , Giving Quotes

For my part, I should be inclined to suggest that the chief object of education should be to restore simplicity. If you like to put it so, the chief object of education is not to learn things; nay, the chief object of education is to unlearn things.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Simplicity Quotes , Should Quotes

...but this is the real objection to that torrent of modern talk about treating crime as disease, about making prison merely a hygienic environment like a hospital, of healing sin by slow scientific methods. The fallacy of the whole thing is that evil is a matter of active choice whereas disease is not.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Real Quotes , Healing Quotes

Modern man is staggering and losing his balance because he is being pelted with little pieces of alleged fact which are native to the newspapers; and, if they turn out not to be facts, that is still more native to newspapers.

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

In the fairy tale, an incomprehensible happiness rests upon an incomprehensible condition. A box is opened and all evils fly out. A word is forgotten and cities perish. A lamp is lit and love flies away. An apple is eaten and the hope of God is gone.

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The man of the true religious tradition understands two things: liberty and obedience. The first means knowing what you really want. The second means knowing what you really trust.

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If the world becomes pagan and perishes, the last man left alive would do well to quote the Iliad and die.

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The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Vices Quotes , Today Quotes

The new school of art and thought does indeed wear an air of audacity, and breaks out everywhere into blasphemies, as if it required any courage to say a blasphemy. There is only one thing that it requires real courage to say, and that is a truism.

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It is hard to make government representative when it is also remote.

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If you spell a word wrong you have some temptation to think it wrong.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Temptation Quotes

But whenever one meets modern thinkers (as one often does) progressing toward a madhouse, one always finds, on inquiry, that they have just had a splendid escape from another madhouse. Thus, hundreds of people become Socialists, not because they have tried Socialism and found it nice, but because they have tried Individualism and found it particularly nasty.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Nice Quotes , People Quotes

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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Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall be gloriously surprised.

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I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible since.

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In all legends men have thought of women as sublime separately but horrible in a herd.

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

The long words are not the hard words, it is the short words that are hard. There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the word "damn" than in the word "degeneration."

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Long Quotes , Metaphysical Quotes

That is the one eternal education: to be sure enough that something is true that you dare to tell it to a child.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Children Quotes , Enough Quotes

No man can break any of the Ten Commandments. He can only break himself against them.

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Democracy is reproached with saying that the majority is always right. But progress says that the minority is always right.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Democracy Quotes , Progress Quotes