Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

What the world wants, what the world is waiting for, is not Modern Poetry or Classical Poetry or Neo-Classical Poetry - but Good Poetry. And the dreadful disreputable doubt, which stirs in my own skeptical mind, is doubt about whether it would really matter much what style a poet chose to write in, in any period, as long as he wrote Good poetry.

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Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.

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The materialist theory of history, that all politics and ethics are the expression of economics, is a very simple fallacy indeed. It consists simply of confusing the necessary conditions of life with the normal preoccupations of life, that are quite a different thing.

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

For good or evil, a line has been passed in our political history; and something that we have known all our lives is dead. I will take only one example of it: our politicians can no longer be caricatured.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Humor Quotes , Evil Quotes

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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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Doe Quotes , Looks Quotes

Such professions as the soldier and the lawyer ... give ample opportunity for crimes but not much for mere illusions. ... If you have lost a battle you cannot believe you have won it; if your client is hanged you cannot pretend that you have gotten him off.

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You may think a crime horrible because you could never commit it. I think it is horrible because I could commit it.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Thinking Quotes , May Quotes

The modern mind will accept nothing on authority, but will accept anything on no authority. Say that the Bible or the Pope says so and it will be dismissed without further examination. But preface your remark with "I think I heard somewhere," or, try but fail to remember the name of some professor who might have said "such-and-such," and it will be immediately accepted as an unshakable fact.

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The Reformer is always right about what's wrong. However, he's often wrong about what is right.

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The issue is now clear. It is between light and darkness and everyone must choose his side.

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The difficulty of explaining ‘why I am a Catholic’ is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true.

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It is unpardonable conceit not to laugh at your own jokes. Joking is undignified; that is why it is so good for one's soul. Do not fancy you can be a detached wit and avoid being a buffoon; you cannot. If you are the Court Jester you must be the Court Fool.

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

And I will add this point of merely personal experience of humanity: when men have a real explanation they explain it, eagerly and copiously and in common speech, as Huxley freely gave it when he thought he had it. When they have no explanation to offer, they give short dignified replies, disdainful of the ignorance of the multitude.

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I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible since.

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Truth is sacred; and if you tell the truth too often nobody will believe it.

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I will go forth as a real outlaw," he said, "and as men do robbery on the highway I will do right on the highway; and it will be counted a wilder crime.

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

Instead of the machine being a giant to which the man is the pygmy, we must at last reverse the proportions until man is a giant to whom the machine is the toy.

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

No sane person, I hope, would accuse me of saying that every Distributist must drink beer; especially if he could brew his own cider or found claret better for his health. But I do most emphatically scorn and scout the vulgar refinement that regards beer as something unseemly and humiliating. And I would shout the name of beer a hundred times a day, to shock all the snobs who have so shameful a sense of shame.

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Vigorous organisms talk not about their processes, but about their aims.

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Saint George he was for England, And before he killed the dragon he drank a pint of English ale out of an English flagon.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Beer Quotes , Dragons Quotes