Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.

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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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Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin-a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or not man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing.

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There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.

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Grey is a colour that always seems on the eve of changing to some other colour.

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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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The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life.

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The central idea of poetry is the idea of guessing right, like a child.

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The highest and noblest thing that history can be is a good story.

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Forms of expression always appear turgid to those who do not share the emotions they represent.

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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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One can hardly think too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much of one's soul.

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When a woman puts up her fists to a man she is putting herself in the only posture in which he is not afraid of her.

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[Marxism will] in a generation or so [go] into the limbo of most heresies, but meanwhile it will have poisoned the Russian Revolution.

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The life of a thinking man will probably be divided into two parts -- the first in which he desires to exterminate modern thinkers, and the second in which he desires to watch them exterminating each other. ... Suppose, for instance, there is an old story and a new skeptic who is skeptical of the story. We have only to wait a little while for a yet newer skeptic who is skeptical of the skeptic. He will probably find the old notion actually a help in his new notion. This process is an abstract truth applying to anything, apart from agreement or disagreement.

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

Very few people in the world would care to listen to the real defense of their own characters. The real defense, the defense which belongs to the Day of Judgment, would make such damaging admissions, would clear away so many artificial virtues, would tell such tragedies of weakness and failure, that a man would sooner be misunderstood and censured by the world than exposed to that awful and merciless eulogy.

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People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

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A man looking at a hippopotamus may sometimes be tempted to regard a hippopotamus as an enormous mistake; but he is also bound to confess that a fortunate inferiority prevents him personally from making such mistakes.

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Those thinkers who cannot believe in any gods often assert that the love of humanity would be in itself sufficient for them; and so, perhaps, it would, if they had it.

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By all men bond to Nothing, Being slaves without a lord, By one blind idiot world obeyed, Too blind to be abhorred.

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