Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Men spoke much in my boyhood about restricted or ruined men of genius: and it was common to say that many a man was a Great Might-Have-Been. To me it's a more solid and startling fact that any man in the street is a Great Might-Not-Have-Been.

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There is no such thing as Success....That a thing is successful merely means that it is; a millionaire is successful in being a millionaire and a donkey in being a donkey.

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No man's really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be.

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Most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities.

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A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been a boy.

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As regards moral courage, then, it is not so much that the public schools support it feebly, as that they suppress it firmly.

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Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad, but chess players do.

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Playing as children means playing is the most serious thing in the world.

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There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.

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Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of 'touching' a man's heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it.

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The real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.

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It is the simple truth that man does differ from the brutes in kind and not in degree; and the proof of it is here; that it sounds like a truism to say that the most primitive man drew a picture of a monkey and that it sounds like a joke to say that the most intelligent monkey drew a picture of a man. Something of division and disproportion has appeared; and it is unique. Art is the signature of man.

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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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I am not fighting a hopeless fight. People who have fought in real fights don't, as a rule.

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They have invented a phrase, a phrase that is a black and white contradiction in two words - 'free-love' - as if a lover ever had been, or ever could be, free.

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Obviously if any actions, even a lunatic's, can be causeless, determinism is done for. If the chain of causation can be broken for a madman, it can be broken for a man.

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Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.

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If I think the universe is triangular, and you think it is square, there cannot be room for two universes. We may argue politely, we may argue humanely, we may argue with great mutual benefit: but, obviously, we must argue.

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It is only great men who take up a great space by not being there.

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America is the only country ever founded on a creed.

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