Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

It is cold anarchy to say that all men are to meddle in all men'smarriages. It is cold anarchy to say that any doctor may seize andsegregate anyone he likes. But it is not anarchy to say that a fewgreat hygienists might enclose or limit the life of all citizens,as nurses do with a family of children. It is not anarchy, it istyranny; but tyranny is a workable thing.

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The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them.

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But those dealing in the actual manufacture of mind are dealing in a very explosive material. The material is not merely the clay of which man is master, but the truths or semblances of truth which have a certain mastery over man. The material is explosive because it must be taken seriously. The men writing books really are throwing bombs.

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Mr. Blatchford says that there was not a Fall but a gradual rise. But the very word "rise" implies that you know toward what you are rising. Unless there is a standard you cannot tell whether you are rising or falling. But the main point is that the Fall like every other large path of Christianity is embodied in the common language talked on the top of an omnibus. Anybody might say, "Very few men are really Manly." Nobody would say, "Very few whales are really whaley."

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Every one on the earth should believe that he has something to give to the world which cannot otherwise be given.

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A third-class carriage is a community, while a first-class carriage is a place of wild hermits.

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It is very good for a man to talk about what he does not understand; as long as he understands that he does not understand it.

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But I was frightfully fond of the universe and wanted to address it by a diminutive. I often did so; and it never seemed to mind.

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Evil comes at leisure like the disease. Good comes in a hurry like the doctor.

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Correctitude implies nowadays a formal or fastidious use of words; and what is wanted is not so much the correct as the living use of words. It is the memory of the meaning of a word which is the life of the word.

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A large section of the intelligentsia seems wholly devoid of intelligence.

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

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In a world where everything is ridiculous, nothing can be ridiculed. You cannot unmask a mask.

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The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.

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If we are bound to improve, we need not trouble to improve. The pure doctrine of progress is the best of all reasons for not being a progressive.

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Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

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Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.

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Ivory may not be so white as snow, but the whole Arctic continent does not make ivory black.

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Most Americans are born drunk, and really require a little wine or beer to sober them. They have a sort of permanent intoxication from within, a sort of invisible champagne. Americans do not need to drink to inspire them to do anything, though they do sometimes, I think, need a little for the deeper and more delicate purpose of teaching them how to do nothing.

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A naked moon stood in a naked sky.

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