Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Everyone seems to assume that the unscrupulous parts of journalism will be the frivolous or jocular parts. This is against all ethical experience. Jokes are generally honest. Complete solemnity is almost always dishonest. The writer of the snippet merely refers to a frivolous and fugitive fact in a frivolous and fugitive way. The writer of the leading article has to write about a fact he has known for 20 minutes as though he has studied it for 20 years.

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Puritanism was an honourable mood; it was a noble fad. In other words, it was a highly creditable mistake.

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The most important fact about the subject of education is that there is no such thing. Education is not a subject and it does not deal in subjects. It is instead the transfer of a way of life.

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How quickly revolutions grow old; and, worse still, respectable.

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The word 'good' has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.

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

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

Liberty is the very last idea that seems to occur to anybody, in considering any political or social proposal. It is only necessary for anybody for any reason to allege any evidence of any evil in any human practice, for people instantly to suggest that the practice should be suppressed by the police.

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No animal ever invented anything as bad as drunkenness - or so good as drink.

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Powerful men who have powerful passions use much of their strength in forging chains for themselves.

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I should say that psycho-analysis was confession without absolution.

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Happiness is not only a hope, but also in some strange manner a memory ... we are all kings in exile.

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We are talking about an artist; and for the enjoyment of the artist the mask must be to some extent moulded on the face. What he makes outside him must correspond to something inside him; he can only make his effects out of some of the materials of his soul.

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

It is a strange thing that many truly spiritual men, such as General Gordon, have actually spent some hours in speculating upon the precise location of the Garden of Eden. Most probably we are in Eden still. It is only our eyes that have changed.

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Science must not impose any philosophy, any more than the telephone must tell us what to say.

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A detective story generally describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. A modern philosophic story generally describes six dead men discussing how any man can possibly be alive.

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The historic glory of America lies in the fact that it is the one nation that was founded like a church. That is, it was founded on a faith that was not merely summed up after it had exited, but was defined before it existed.

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It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light.

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Sticking to one woman is a small price to pay for so much as having seen one woman.

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We should always endeavor to wonder at the permanent thing, not at the mere exception. We should be startled by the sun, and not by the eclipse. We should wonder less at the earthquake, and wonder more at the earth.

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We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press... It is not we who silence the press. It is the press who silences us.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Silence Quotes , Needs Quotes