Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

If you spell a word wrong you have some temptation to think it wrong.

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We should thank God for beer and burgundy by not drinking too much of them.

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We are talking about an artist; and for the enjoyment of the artist the mask must be to some extent moulded on the face. What he makes outside him must correspond to something inside him; he can only make his effects out of some of the materials of his soul.

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Democracy is reproached with saying that the majority is always right. But progress says that the minority is always right.

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Whatever the word "great" means, Dickens was what it means.

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I don't deny," he said, "that there should be priests to remind men that they will one day die. I only say that at certain strange epochs it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, actually to remind men that they are not dead yet.

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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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The comedy of man survives the tragedy of man.

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A good civilisation spreads over us freely like a tree, varying and yielding because it is alive. A bad civilisation stands up and sticks out above us like an umbrella-artificial, mathematical in shape; not merely universal, but uniform.

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Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

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The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.

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...a figure of speech can often get into a crack too small for a definition.

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It is not only possible to say a great deal in praise of play; it is really possible to say the highest things in praise of it. It might reasonably be maintained that the true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.

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Passion makes every detail important.

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The modern habit of saying "This is my opinion, but I may be wrong" is entirely irrational. If I say that it may be wrong, I say that is not my opinion. The modern habit of saying "Every man has a different philosophy; this is my philosophy and it suits me" – the habit of saying this is mere weak-mindedness. A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon.

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Modern toleration is really a tyranny. It is a tyranny because it is a silence.

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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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People that insist upon drinking and driving, are putting the quart before the hearse.

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The home is not the one tame place in the world of adventure. It is the one wild place in the world of rules and set tasks.

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And though St. John saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators.

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