Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Our society is so abnormal that the normal man never dreams of having the normal occupation of looking after his own property. When he chooses a trade, he chooses one of the ten thousand trades that involve looking after other people's property.

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

We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.

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

It is the beginning of all true criticism of our time to realize that it has really nothing to say, at the very moment when it has invented so tremendous a trumpet for saying it.

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The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice.

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Then I only wondered who put the toys in the stocking; now I wonder who put the stocking by the bed, and the bed in the room, and the room in the house, and the house on the planet, and the great planet in the void.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , House Quotes , Bed Quotes

Were Patrick Henry to return to earth and look around on the vast economic order of the day, he might revise his observation and merely say ‘Give me death’-the alternative being manifestly impossible under modern conditions.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Order Quotes , Giving Quotes

A great city is the place to escape the true drama of provincial life, and find solace in fantasy.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Drama Quotes , Cities Quotes

There is a law written in the darkest of the Books of Life, and it is this: If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in frightful danger of seeing it for the first time.

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Bigotry is an incapacity to conceive seriously the alternative to a proposition.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Alternatives Quotes , Incapacity Quotes

I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. There are a great many human souls whom we should accept more kindly, and even appreciate more clearly, if we simply thought of them as people in a story.

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

If a rhinoceros were to enter this restaurant now, there is no denying he would have great power here. But I should be the first to rise and assure him that he had no authority whatever.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Leadership Quotes , Firsts Quotes

No man can break any of the Ten Commandments. He can only break himself against them.

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Spring never is spring unless it comes too soon.

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If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.

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A thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Creativity Quotes , Construction Quotes

The woman does not work because the man tells her to work and she obeys. On the contrary, the woman works because she has told the man to work and he hasn’t obeyed.

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Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.

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All but the hard hearted man must be torn with pity for this pathetic dilemma of the rich man, who has to keep the poor man just stout enough to do the work and just thin enough to have to do it.

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A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been a boy.

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It's not the world that's got so much worse but the news coverage that's got so much better.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Media Quotes , World Quotes