Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

When giving treats to friends or children, give them what they like, emphatically not what is good for them.

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

The old idea that the joke was not good enough for the company has been superseded by the new aristocratic idea that the company was not worthy of the joke. They have introduced an almost insane individualism into that one form of intercourse which is specially and uproariously communal. They have made even levities into secrets. They have made laughter lonelier than tears.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Laughter Quotes , Humor Quotes

Not only is suicide a sin, it is the sin. It is the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an interest in existence; the refusal to take the oath of loyalty to life. The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men. As far as he is concerned he wipes out the world.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Loyalty Quotes , Suicide Quotes

We all have a little weakness, which is very natural but rather misleading, for supposing that this epoch must be the end of the world because it will be the end of us. How future generations will get on without us is indeed, when we come to think of it, quite a puzzle. But I suppose they will get on somehow, and may possibly venture to revise our judgments as we have revised earlier judgments.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Civilization Quotes

The coziness between church and state is good for the state and bad for the church

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Idolatry is when you worship what you should use, and use what you should worship.

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A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true.

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None of the modern machines, none of the modern paraphernalia. . . have any power except over the people who choose to use them.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , People Quotes , Progress Quotes

Religious and philosophical beliefs are, indeed, as dangerous as fire, and nothing can take from them that beauty of danger. But there is only one way of really guarding ourselves against the excessive danger of them, and that is to be steeped in philosophy and soaked in religion.

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I defy anybody to say what are the rights of a citizen, if they do not include the control of his own diet in relation to his own health.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Rights Quotes , Citizens Quotes

The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them.

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Plato was only a Bernard Shaw who unfortunately made his jokes in Greek.

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To say that a man is an idealist is merely to say that he is a man.

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It was not the house that grew dull, but I that grew dull in it. My wife was better than all women, and yet I could not feel it.

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A turkey is more occult and awful than all the angels and archangels. In so far as God has partly revealed to us an angelic world, he has partly told us what an angel means. But God has never told us what a turkey means. And if you go and stare at a live turkey for an hour or two, you will find by the end of it that the enigma has rather increased than diminished.

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

In dealing with the arrogant asserter of doubt, it is not the right method to tell him to stop doubting. It is rather the right method to tell him to go on doubting, to doubt a little more, to doubt every day newer and wilder things in the universe, until at last, by some strange enlightenment, he may begin to doubt himself.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Doubt Quotes , Enlightenment Quotes

People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , People Quotes , Mad Quotes

It is largely because the free-thinkers, as a school, have hardly made up their minds whether they want to be more optimist or more pessimist than Christianity that their small but sincere movement has failed.

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Men rush towards complexity, but they yearn towards simplicity. They try to be kings; but they dream of being shepherds.

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

If we want to give poor people soap we must set out deliberately to give them luxuries. If we will not make them rich enough to be clean, then empathically we must do what we did with the saints. We must reverence them for being dirty.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Dirty Quotes , Luxury Quotes