Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity, which means charity to the deserving poor; but charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them.

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We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.

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If the common man in the past had a grave respect for property, it may conceivably have been because he sometimes had some of his own.

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

Why do all the clerks and navvies in the railway trains look so sad and tired, so very sad and tired? I will tell you. It is because they know that the train is going right. It is because they know that whatever place they have taken a ticket for that place they will reach. It is because after they have passed Sloane Square they know that the next station must be Victoria, and nothing but Victoria. Oh, their wild rapture! oh, their eyes like stars and their souls again in Eden, if the next station were unaccountably Baker Street!

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It is quite an old-fashioned fallacy to suppose that our objection to scepticism is that it removes the discipline from life. Our objection to scepticism is that it removes the motive power. Materialism is not a thing which destroys mere restraint. Materialism itself is the great restraint.

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Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.

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We talk of wild animals but man is the only wild animal. It is man that has broken out. All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of the tribe or type.

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It is better to speak wisdom foolishly like the saints than to speak folly wisely like the deans.

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The coziness between church and state is good for the state and bad for the church

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The men of the East may spell the stars, And times and triumphs mark, But the men signed of the cross of Christ Go gaily in the dark.

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It was the mystical dogma of Bentham and Adam Smith and the rest, that some of the worst of human passions would turn out to be all for the best. It was the mysterious doctrine that selfishness would do the work of unselfishness.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Passion Quotes , Selfishness 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 the first law of practical courage. To be in the weakest camp is to be in the strongest school.

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Nine times out of ten it is the coarse word that condemns an evil, and the refined word that excuses it.

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The only object of liberty is life.

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If there were no God, there would be no atheists.

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I have argued with him on almost every subject in the world, and we have always been on opposite sides, without affectation or animosity... It is necessary to disagree with him as much as I do, in order to admire him as I do; and I am proud of him as a foe even more than as a friend.

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It is the chief value of legend to mix up the centuries while preserving the sentiment.

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A nation that has nothing but its amusements will not be amused for long.

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You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.

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