Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place...The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a nail in his boot that prevented him from going on. For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which made him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Hard Work Quotes , Humility Quotes

We are passing into a social phase in which unless a heroic effort is made for human dignity and freedom, gold will be the sole method of government and therefore the sole standard of manners.

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There nearly always is a method in madness.

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Art is the signature of man.

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Savages and modern artists are alike strangely driven to create something uglier than themselves. but the artists find it harder.

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

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The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense.

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If I did not believe in God, I should still want my doctor, my lawyer and my banker to do so.

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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 long words are not the hard words, it is the short words that are hard. There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the word "damn" than in the word "degeneration."

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Long Quotes , Metaphysical Quotes

If we want to give poor people soap we must set out deliberately to give them luxuries. If we will not make them rich enough to be clean, then empathically we must do what we did with the saints. We must reverence them for being dirty.

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The cross cannot be defeated for it is defeat.

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No man can be merry unless he is serious.

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The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman.

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Family is the theatre of the spiritual drama, the place where things happen, especially the things that matter.

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There are a great many good people, and a great many sane people here this afternoon. Unfortunately, by a kind of coincidence, all the good people are mad, and all the sane people are wicked.

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

...I will praise the English climate till I die—even if I die of the English climate. There is no weather so good as English weather. Nay, in a real sense there is no weather at all anywhere but in England. In France you have much sun and some rain; in Italy you have hot winds and cold winds; in Scotland and Ireland you have rain, either thick or thin; in America you have hells of heat and cold, and in the Tropics you have sunstrokes varied by thunderbolts. But all these you have on a broad and brutal scale, and you settle down into contentment or despair.

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Just at present you only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the lamp by the light of the tree.

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The great ideals of the past failed not by being outlived (which must mean over-lived), but by not being lived enough. Mankind has not passed through the Middle Ages. Rather mankind has retreated from the Middle Ages in reaction and rout. The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.

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...but this is the real objection to that torrent of modern talk about treating crime as disease, about making prison merely a hygienic environment like a hospital, of healing sin by slow scientific methods. The fallacy of the whole thing is that evil is a matter of active choice whereas disease is not.

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