Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

The worst moment for an atheist is when he feels a profound sense of gratitude and has no one to thank.

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But I was frightfully fond of the universe and wanted to address it by a diminutive. I often did so; and it never seemed to mind.

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...the primary paradox that man is superior to all the things around him and yet is at their mercy.

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In every serious doctrine of the destiny of men, there is some trace of the doctrine of the equality of men. But the capitalist really depends on some religion of inequality. The capitalist must somehow distinguish himself from human kind; he must be obviously above it or he would be obviously below it.

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All the controversialists who have become conscious of the real issue are already saying of our ideal exactly what used to be said of the Socialists' ideal. They are saying that private property is too ideal not to be impossible. They are saying that private enterprise is too good to be true. They are saying that the idea of ordinary men owning ordinary possessions is against the laws of political economy and requires an alteration in human nature.

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We actually love ourselves more than we love joy.

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The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs. It is a disease which arises from men no having sufficient power of expression to utter and get rid of the element of art in their being.

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The academic mind reflects infinity, and is full of light by the simple process of being shallow and standing still.

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Doing nothing is sometimes one of the highest of the duties of man.

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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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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Government Quotes , Effort Quotes

At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper. . . .

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I do not feel any contempt for an atheist, who is often a man limited and constrained by his own logic to a very sad simplification.

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I like the Americans for a great many reasons. I like them because even the modern thing called industrialism has not entirely destroyed in them the very ancient thing called democracy. I like them because they have a respect for work which really curbs the human tendency to snobbishness.

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He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it.

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He is only a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of the Conservative.

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The diseased pride [of artistic individualists] was not even conscious of a public interest, and would have found all political terms utterly tasteless and insignificant. It was no longer a question of one man one vote, but of one man one universe.

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Architecture is the alphabet of giants; it is the largest set of symbols ever made to meet the eyes of men. A tower stands up like a sort of simplified stature, of much more than heroic size.

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Dipsomaniac and the abstainer are not only both mistaken, but they both make the same mistake. They both regard wine as a drug and not as a drink.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Mistake Quotes , Wine Quotes

The most unfathomable schools and sages have never attained to the gravity which dwells in the eyes of a baby of three months old. It is the gravity of astonishment at the universe, and astonishment at the universe is not mysticism, but a transcendent common-sense. The fascination of children lies in this: that with each of them all things are remade, and the universe is put again upon its trial.

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I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.

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