Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Just the other day in the Underground I enjoyed the pleasure of offering my seat to three ladies.

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Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.

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Your next-door neighbor is not a man; he is an environment. He is the barking of a dog; he is the noise of a piano; he is a dispute about a party wall; he is drains that are worse than yours, or roses that are better than yours.

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When a person has found something which he prefers to life itself, he for the first time has begun to live.

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Our digestions, going sacredly and silently right, that is the foundation of all poetry.

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...But nature does not say that cats are more valuable than mice; nature makes no remark on the subject. She does not even say that the cat is enviable or the mouse pitiable. We think the cat superior because we have (or most of us have) a particular philosophy to the effect that life is better than death. But if the mouse were a German pessimist mouse, he might not think that the cat had beaten him at all. He might think he had beaten the cat by getting to the grave first.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Philosophy Quotes , Cat Quotes

The aesthete aims at harmony rather than beauty. If his hair does not match the mauve sunset against which he is standing, he hurriedly dyes his hair another shade of mauve. If his wife does not go with the wall-paper, he gets a divorce.

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But there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.

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Science must not impose any philosophy, any more than the telephone must tell us what to say.

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I am a journalist and have no earthly motives except curiosity and personal vanity.

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While once it was the rank and file that cheered with all the partisan passions at their heights, today it is the party leaders who are cheering themselves; and all by themselves. The mob that is their audience is in one vast universal trance, thinking about something else.

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You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world.

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If you happen to read fairy tales, you will observe that one idea runs from one end of them to the other--the idea that peace and happiness can only exist on some condition. This idea, which is the core of ethics, is the core of the nursery-tales.

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

The oligarchic character of the modern English commonwealth does not rest, like many oligarchies, on the cruelty of the rich to the poor. It does not even rest on the kindness of the rich to the poor. It rests on the perennial and unfailing kindness of the poor to the rich.

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I always like a dog so long as he isn't spelled backward.

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Customs are generally unselfish. Habits are nearly always selfish.

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The first fact about the celebration of a birthday is that it is a way of affirming defiantly, and even flamboyantly, that it is a good thing to be alive.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Alive Quotes , Way Quotes

A good Moslem king was one who was strict in religion, valiant in battle, just in giving judgment among his people, but not one who had the slightest objection in international matters to removing his neighbour's landmark.

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

That all war is physically frightful is obvious; but if that were a moral verdict, there would be no difference between a torturer and a surgeon. There are certain intellectuals who are too bright to be content with merely praising peace but who are infuriated by anybody praising war. If no war is possible, all criminality has its chance

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , War Quotes , Differences Quotes

Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. Unless a man starts on the strange assumption that he has never existed before, it is quite certain that he will never exist afterwards.

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