Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

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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Any man who preaches real love is bound to beget hate. It is as true of democratic fraternity as a divine love; sham love ends in compromise and common philosophy; but real love has always ended in bloodshed.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Hate Quotes , Philosophy 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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The unconscious democracy of America is a very fine thing. It is a true and deep and instinctive assumption of the equality of citizens, which even voting and elections have not destroyed.

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The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.

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Journalism only tells us what men are doing; it is fiction that tells us what they are thinking, and still more what they are feeling. If a new scientific theory finds the soul of a man in his dreams, at least it ought not to leave out his day-dreams. And all fiction is only a diary of day-dreams instead of days. And this profound preoccupation of men's minds with certain things always eventually has an effect even on the external expression of the age.

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Where does a wise man kick a pebble? On the beach. Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest.

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You may think a crime horrible because you could never commit it. I think it is horrible because I could commit it.

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

A man making the confession of any creed worth ten minutes' intelligent talk, is always a man who gains something and gives up something. So long as he does both he can create: for he is making an outline and a shape.

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He is a [sane] man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head.

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'My country, right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'

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Free verse is like free love; it is a contradiction in terms.

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Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Dirty Quotes , Self Quotes

It is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Knowledge Quotes , Complaining Quotes

We are talking about an artist; and for the enjoyment of the artist the mask must be to some extent moulded on the face. What he makes outside him must correspond to something inside him; he can only make his effects out of some of the materials of his soul.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Art Quotes , Soul Quotes

Leaving the complications of the human breakfast-table out of account, in an elemental sense, the egg only exists to produce the chicken. But the chicken does not exist only in order to produce another egg. He may also exist to amuse himself, to praise God, and even to suggest ideas to a French dramatist. Being a conscious life, he is, or may be, valuable in himself.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Animal Quotes , Order Quotes

The vault above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world. Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like the prompt stillness of a sick room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy, because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Christian Quotes , Laughter Quotes

Women have a thirst for order and beauty as for something physical; there is a strange female power of hating ugliness and waste as good men can only hate sin and bad men virtue.

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If man is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust.

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But since he stood for England And knew what England means, Unless you give him bacon You must not give him beans.

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