Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

The central idea of poetry is the idea of guessing right, like a child.

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We need to be reminded more than we need to be instructed

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Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful.

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Leaving the complications of the human breakfast-table out of account, in an elemental sense, the egg only exists to produce the chicken. But the chicken does not exist only in order to produce another egg. He may also exist to amuse himself, to praise God, and even to suggest ideas to a French dramatist. Being a conscious life, he is, or may be, valuable in himself.

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The original quality in any man of imagination is imagery.

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It is because artists do not practise, patrons do not patronize, crowds do not assemble to reverently worship the great work of Doing Nothing, that the world has lost its philosophy and even failed to invent a new religion.

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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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A modern vegetarian is also a teetotaler, yet there is no obvious connection between consuming vegetables and not consuming fermented vegetables. A drunkard, when lifted laboriously out of the gutter, might well be heard huskily to plead that he had fallen there through excessive devotion to a vegetable diet.

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One must somehow find a way of loving the world without trusting it; somehow one must love the world without being worldly.

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Free verse is like free love; it is a contradiction in terms.

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Silence is the unbearable repartee.

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For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.

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[Paradox is] truth standing on its head to gain attention.

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He said he didn't very well understand how George was going to sleep any more than he did now, seeing that there were only twenty-four hours in each day.

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All that we call spirit and art and ecstacy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forgot.

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One elephant having a trunk was odd; but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot.

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When people talk as if the Crusades were nothing more than an aggressive raid against Islam, they seem to forget in the strangest way that Islam itself was only an aggressive raid against the old and ordered civilization in these parts. I do not say it in mere hostility to the religion of Mahomet; I am fully conscious of many values and virtues in it; but certainly it was Islam that was the invasion and Christendom that was the thing invaded.

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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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When people impute special vices to the Christian Church, they seem entirely to forget that the world (which is the only other thing there is) has these vices much more. The Church has been cruel; but the world has been much more cruel. The Church has plotted; but the world has plotted much more. The Church has been superstitious; but it has never been so superstitious as the world is when left to itself.

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The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense.

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