Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

The average woman is at the head of something with which she can do as she likes; the average man has to obey orders and do nothing else.

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The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

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The one perfectly divine thing, the one glimpse of God's paradise given on earth, is to fight a losing battle - and not lose it.

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I agree with the realistic Irishman who said he preferred to prophesy after the event.

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A man imagines a happy marriage as a marriage of love; even if he makes fun of marriages that are without love, or feels sorry for lovers who are without marriage.

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Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

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If you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will have no answer except slanging or silence.

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I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible since.

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And they that rule in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they have no graves as yet.

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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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What is the good of telling a community that it has every liberty except the liberty to make laws? The liberty to make laws is what constitutes a free people.

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All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.

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The great misfortune of the modern English is not at all that they are more boastful than other people (they are not); it is that they are boastful about those particular things which nobody can boast of without losing them.

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No man's really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be.

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Tradition is only democracy extended through time; it may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who are merely walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father.

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The center of every man's existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like a toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel.

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Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.

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I would not say that old men grow wise, for men never grow wise; and many old men retain a very attractive childishness and cheerful innocence. Elderly people are often much more romantic than younger people, and sometimes even more adventurous, having begun to realize how many things they do not know.

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The Church is a house with a hundred gates: and no two men enter at exactly the same angle

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They say travel broadens the mind, but you must have the mind.

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