Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

The old assumption of the approximate impossibility of war really rested on a similar assumption about the impossibility of evil-and especially of evil in high places.

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

It is not merely true that a creed unites men. Nay, a difference of creed unites men - so long as it is a clear difference. A boundary unites. Many a magnanimous Moslem and chivalrous Crusader must have been nearer to each other, because they were both dogmatists, than any two agnostics. "I say God is One," and "I say God is One but also Three," that is the beginning of a good quarrelsome, manly friendship.

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A Catholic is a person who has plucked up courage to face the incredible and inconceivable idea that something else may be wiser than he is.

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The unconscious democracy of America is a very fine thing. It is a true and deep and instinctive assumption of the equality of citizens, which even voting and elections have not destroyed.

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A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

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True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare.

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The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

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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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One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

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The average businessman began to be agnostic, not so much because he did not know where he was, as because he wanted to forget. Many of the rich took to scepticism exactly as the poor took to drink; because it was a way out.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Average Quotes , Way Quotes

Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense, every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else.

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The man who says, 'my country right or wrong' is like the man who says, 'my mother drunk or sober'

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I came to the conclusion that the optimist thought everything good except the pessimist, and that the pessimist thought everything bad, except himself.

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Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all.

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A good joke is the closest thing we have to divine revelation.

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Men in England are ruled, at this minute by the clock, by brutes who refuse them bread, by liars who refuse them news, and by fools who cannot govern, and therefore wish to enslave.

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The prophet and the quack are alike admired for a generation, and admired for the wrong reasons.

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But they none of them create the psychological conditions in which I first saw, or desired to see, the flower.

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Any man who preaches real love is bound to beget hate. It is as true of democratic fraternity as a divine love; sham love ends in compromise and common philosophy; but real love has always ended in bloodshed.

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Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?

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