Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare.

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Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Giving Up Quotes , Don't Give Up Quotes

The Christian is quite free to believe that there is a considerable amount of settled order and inevitable development in the universe. But the materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle.

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The professional soldier gains more and more power as the general courage of a community declines.

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You!" he cried. "You never hated because you never lived. I know what you are all of you, from first to last--you are the people in power! You are the police--the great, fat smiling men in blue and buttons! You are the Law, and you have never been broken. But is there a free soul alive that does not long to break you, only because you have never been broken?

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Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf; is better than a whole loaf.

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

It might reasonably be maintained that the true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground. To be at last in such secure innocence that one can juggle with the universe and the stars, to be so good that one can treat everything as a joke - that may be, perhaps, the real end and final holiday of human souls.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Faith Quotes , Stars Quotes

The good Bishop of Assisi expressed a sort of horror at the hard life which the Little Brothers lived at the Portiuncula, without comforts, without possessions, eating anything they could get and sleeping anyhow on the ground. St. Francis answered him with that curious and almost stunning shrewdness which the unworldly can sometimes wield like a club of stone. He said, 'If we had any possessions, we should need weapons and laws to defend them.

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It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.

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Liberty has produced scepticism, and scepticism has destroyed liberty. The lovers of liberty thought they were leaving it unlimited, when they were only leaving it undefined. They thought they were only leaving it undefined, when they were really leaving it undefended.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Leaving Quotes , Liberty Quotes

If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?

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The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.

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It is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin, a creature who does not exist. It is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he didn't.

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Nothing taken for granted; everything received with gratitude; everything passed on with grace.

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The man of the true religious tradition understands two things: liberty and obedience. The first means knowing what you really want. The second means knowing what you really trust.

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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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A great deal of contemporary criticism reads to me like a man saying, 'Of course I do not like green cheese. I am very fond of brown sherry.

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Science must not impose any philosophy, any more than the telephone must tell us what to say.

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Thinking in isolation and with pride ends in being an idiot.

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Aristocracy: government by the badly educated.

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