Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbour.

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It is not only possible to say a great deal in praise of play; it is really possible to say the highest things in praise of it. It might reasonably be maintained that the true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.

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The strangest whim has seized me ... After all I think I will not hang myself today.

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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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The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind.

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Jokes are generally honest. Complete solemnity is always dishonest.

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When we look upon lives so human and yet so small, we feel as if we ourselves were enlarged to an embarrassing bigness of stature. We feel the same kind of obligation to these creatures that a deity might feel if he had created something that he could not understand.

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He said he didn't very well understand how George was going to sleep any more than he did now, seeing that there were only twenty-four hours in each day.

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I still believe in liberalism today as much as I ever did, but, oh, there was a happy time when I believed in liberals.

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If the world grows to worldly, it can be rebuked by the Church; but if the Church grows to worldly, it cannot be adequately rebuked for worldlyness by the world.

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There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.

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Great truths can only be forgotten and can never be falsified.

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Americans are a very backward people, with all the real virtues of a backward people; the patriarchal simplicity and human dignity of a democracy, and a respect for labor uncorrupted by cynicism.

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I believe in preaching to the converted; for I have generally found that the converted do not understand their own religion.

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The Frenchman works until he can play. The American works until he can’t play; and then thanks the devil, his master, that he is donkey enough to die in harness. But the Englishman, as he has since become, works until he can pretend that he never worked at all.

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You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world.

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There again," said Syme irritably, "what is there poetical about being in revolt? You might as well say that it is poetical to be sea-sick. Being sick is a revolt. Both being sick and being rebellious may be the wholesome thing on certain desperate occasions; but I'm hanged if I can see why they are poetical...It is things going right," he cried, "that is poetical! Our digestions, for instance, going sacredly and silently right, that is the foundation of all poetry...the most poetical thing in the world is not being sick.

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The Devil's walking parody; On all four-footed things.

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Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.

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Poets do not go mad, but chess players do.

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