Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

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

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Lessons Quotes , Fairytale Quotes

The past is democratic, because it is a people. The future is despotic, because it is a caprice. Every man is alone in his prediction, just as each man is alone in a dream.

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

My brother, Cecil Edward Chesterton, was born when I was about five years old; and, after a brief pause, began to argue. He continued to argue to the end. I am glad to think that through all those years we never stopped arguing; and we never once quarreled. Perhaps the principal objection to a quarrel is that it interrupts an argument.

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If an editor can only make people angry enough, they will write half his newspaper for him for nothing.

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In real life the people who are most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all.

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The past is not what it was.

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What we call emancipation is always and of necessity simply the free choice of the soul between one set of limitations and another.

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

It is quite easy to see why a legend is treated, and ought to be treated, more respectfully than a book of history. The legend is generally made by the majority of people in the village, who are sane. The book is generally written by the one man in the village who is mad.

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The most valuable book we can read, about countries we have visited, is that which recalls to us something that we did notice, but did not notice that we noticed.

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I do not know much about Mohammed or Mohammedanism. I do not take the Koran to bed with me every night. But, if I did on some one particular night, there is one sense at least in which I know what I should not find there. I apprehend that I should not find the work abounding in strong encouragements to the worship of idols; that the praises of polytheism would not be loudly sung; that the character of Mohammed would not be subjected to anything resembling hatred and derision; and that the great modern doctrine of the unimportance of religion would not be needlessly emphasised.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Encouragement Quotes , Strong Quotes

A beetle may or may not be inferior to a man - the matter awaits demonstration; but if he were inferior by ten thousand fathoms, the fact remains that there is probably a beetle view of things of which a man is entirely ignorant. If he wishes to conceive that point of view, he will scarcely reach it by persistently revelling in the fact that he is not a beetle.

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We need to be reminded more than we need to be instructed

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Humility is the luxurious art of reducing ourselves to a point, not to a small thing or a large one, but to a thing with no size at all, so that to it all the cosmic things are what they really are - of immeasurable stature.

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When "everyone knows" that something is so, it is always more interesting and often illuminating to assumeexactly the opposite, and to see where that leads.

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Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

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By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece.

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Real development is not leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them, as from a root.

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We can’t turn life into a pleasure. But we can choose such pleasures as are worthy of us and our immortal souls.

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The trouble with Christianity is, not that its failed, but that it's never been tried . . . not that it can't remake the world, but that it's difficult.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Failure Quotes , World Quotes

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

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