Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Such professions as the soldier and the lawyer ... give ample opportunity for crimes but not much for mere illusions. ... If you have lost a battle you cannot believe you have won it; if your client is hanged you cannot pretend that you have gotten him off.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Believe Quotes , Opportunity Quotes

They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my childlike faith in practical politics.

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We are like the penny, because we have the image of the king stamped on us, the divine king.

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You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.

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By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Confusion Quotes , May Quotes

Oh, most unhappy man,' he cried, 'try to be happy! You have red hair like your sister.' My red hair, like red flames, shall burn up the world,' said Gregory.

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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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Truths turn into dogmas the minute they are disputed.

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You've got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than any one else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes been objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists, as you can see from the barons' wars.

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Each generation is converted by the saint who contradicts it most.

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It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch.

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There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.

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The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic.

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A man imagines a happy marriage as a marriage of love; even if he makes fun of marriages that are without love, or feels sorry for lovers who are without marriage.

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The new community which the capitalists are now constructing will be a very complete and absolute community; and one which will tolerate nothing really independent of itself.

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Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.

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And they that rule in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they have no graves as yet.

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How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.

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Spring never is spring unless it comes too soon.

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Tolerance is the virtue of people who do not believe in anything.

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