Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Tradition is only democracy extended through time; it may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who are merely walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father.

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With any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain healthy humiliation.

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All the exaggerations are right, if they exaggerate the right thing.

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An almost unnatural vigilance is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old.

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There'd be a lot less scandal if people didn't idealize sin and pose as sinners.

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I would never commit the positively anti-social action of robbing a bank, or worse still, working in one.

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The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.

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Stick to the man who looks out of the window and tries to understand the world. Keep clear of the man who looks in at the window and tries to understand you.

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

The old idea that the joke was not good enough for the company has been superseded by the new aristocratic idea that the company was not worthy of the joke. They have introduced an almost insane individualism into that one form of intercourse which is specially and uproariously communal. They have made even levities into secrets. They have made laughter lonelier than tears.

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We are like the penny, because we have the image of the king stamped on us, the divine king.

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Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.

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The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

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It is the root of all religion that a man knows that he is nothing in order to thank God that he is something.

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The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange.

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All architecture is great architecture after sunset.

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It is the mark of our whole modern history that the masses are kept quiet with a fight. They are kept quiet by the fight because it is a sham-fight; thus most of us know by this time that the Party System has been popular only in the sense that a football match is popular.

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There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.

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Circumstances break men's bones; it has never been shown that they break men's optimism.

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If man is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust.

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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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