Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

It never occurred to him to be spiritually won over to the enemy. Many moderns, inured to a weak worship of intellect and force, might have wavered in their allegiance under this oppression of a great personality. . . . But this was a kind of modern meanness to which Syme could not sink even in his extreme morbidity. Like any man, he was coward enough to fear great force; but he was not coward enough to admire it.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Men Quotes , Personality Quotes

I represent the jolly mass of mankind. I am the happy and reckless Christian.

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In dealing with the arrogant asserter of doubt, it is not the right method to tell him to stop doubting. It is rather the right method to tell him to go on doubting, to doubt a little more, to doubt every day newer and wilder things in the universe, until at last, by some strange enlightenment, he may begin to doubt himself.

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A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

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

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The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more.

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If a man does not talk to himself, it is because he is not worth talking to.

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The chief object of education is not to learn things but to unlearn things.

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Forms of expression always appear turgid to those who do not share the emotions they represent.

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Do not, I beseech you be troubled by the increase of forces already in dissolution. You have mistake the hour of the night: it is already morning.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Morning Quotes , Pain Quotes

Though the academic authorities are actually proud of conducting everything by means of Examinations, they seldom indulge in what religious people used to descibe as Self-Examination. The consequence is that the modern State has educated its citizens in a series of ephemeral fads.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Religious Quotes , Mean Quotes

Individually, men may present a more or less rational appearance, eating, sleeping, and scheming. But humanity a a whole is changeful, mystical, fickle, delightful. Men are men, but Man is a woman.

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There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats Grape-Nuts on principle.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Peace Quotes , Men Quotes

If a rhinoceros were to enter this restaurant now, there is no denying he would have great power here. But I should be the first to rise and assure him that he had no authority whatever.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Leadership Quotes , Firsts Quotes

The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone.

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

It is not greedy to enjoy a good dinner, any more than it is to enjoy a good concert. But I do think there is something greedy about trying to enjoy the dinner and the concert at the same time.

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[Paradox is] truth standing on its head to gain attention.

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America has a new delicacy, a coarse, rank refinement.

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It is well sometimes to half understand a poem in the same manner that we half understand the world.

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What is the good of telling a community that it has every liberty except the liberty to make laws? The liberty to make laws is what constitutes a free people.

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