Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

To do Mohammed justice, his main attack was against the idolatries of Asia. Only he thought, just as the Arians did and just as the Unitarians do, that he could attack them better with a greater approximation to plain theism. What distinguishes his heresy from anything like an Arian or Albigensian heresy is that, as it sprang up on the borders of Christendom, it could spread outwards to a barbaric world.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Justice Quotes , Islam Quotes

Here ends another day, during which I have had eyes, ears, hands and the great world around me. Tomorrow begins another day. Why am I allowed two?

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Eye Quotes , Two Quotes

America is the only nation in the world that is founded on creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , America Quotes , Independence Quotes

We fear men so much, because we fear God so little. One fear cures another. When man's terror scares you, turn your thoughts to the wrath of God.

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I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Inspirational Quotes , Motivational Quotes

Tolerance is the virtue of those who don't believe anything.

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There is one thing which gives radiance to everything. It is the idea of something around the corner.

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She had never really listened to anyone in her life; which, some said, was why she had survived.

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The books that influence the world are those that it has not read.

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One of the deepest and strangest of all human moods is the mood which will suddenly strike us perhaps in a garden at night, or deep in sloping meadows, the feeling that every flower and leaf has just uttered something stupendously direct and important, and that we have by a prodigy of imbecility not heard or understood it. There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic ignorance.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Flower Quotes , Ignorance Quotes

And it did for one wild moment cross my mind that, perhaps, those might not be the very best judges of the relation of religion to happiness who, by their own account, had neither one nor the other.

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To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.

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Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Baby Quotes , Children 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

[V]ariety of climate should always go with stability of abode.... an Englishman’s house is not only his castle; it is his fairy castle. Clouds and colours of every varied dawn and eve are perpetually touching and turning it from clay to gold, or from gold to ivory. There is a line of woodland beyond a corner of my garden which is literally different on every one of the three hundred and sixty-five days. Sometimes it seems as near as a hedge, and sometimes as far as a faint and fiery evening cloud.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Garden Quotes , Weather Quotes

Islam was something like a Christian heresy. The early heresies had been full of mad reversals and evasions of the Incarnation, rescuing their Jesus from the reality of his body even at the expense of the sincerity of his soul.

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Somehow one can never manage to be an atheist.

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Gratitude produced the most purely joyful moments that have been known to man.

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There are two kinds of rebellion. The first is one in which the slave demands something that the tyrant has got. The second is one in which he demands something that the tyrant has not got.

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The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say.

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