Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

It is still bad taste to be an avowed atheist. But now it is equally bad taste to be an avowed Christian.

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The old religionist cried out for his god. The new religionist cries out for some god to be his.

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Large organization is loose organization. Nay, it would be almost as true to say that organization is always disorganization.

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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

Liberty has produced scepticism, and scepticism has destroyed liberty. The lovers of liberty thought they were leaving it unlimited, when they were only leaving it undefined. They thought they were only leaving it undefined, when they were really leaving it undefended.

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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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Theology is only thought applied to religion.

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When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.

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The whole curse of the last century has been what is called the Swing of the Pendulum; that is, the idea that Man must go alternately from one extreme to the other. It is a shameful and even shocking fancy; it is the denial of the whole dignity of the mankind. When Man is alive he stands still. It is only when he is dead that he swings.

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Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.

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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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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Perspective Quotes , Pessimist Quotes

I would look at the first chapter of any new novel as a final test of its merits. If there was a murdered man under the sofa in the first chapter, I read the story. If there was no murdered man under the sofa in the first chapter, I dismissed the story as tea-table twaddle, which it often really was.

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When a person has found something which he prefers to life itself, he for the first time has begun to live.

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Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.

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There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob.

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Before the gods that made the gods Had seen their sunrise pass, The White Horse of the White Horse Vale Was cut out of the grass.

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To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Orthodoxy Quotes , Morality Quotes

They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my childlike faith in practical politics.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Believe Quotes , Fundamentals Quotes

Every heresy has been an effort to narrow the Church.

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The human race is always trying this dodge of making everything entirely easy; but the difficulty which it shifts off one thing it shifts to another.

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