Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

I doubt if anyone of any tenderness or imagination can see the hand of a child and not be a little frightened of it. It is awful to think of the essential human energy moving so tiny a thing; it is like imagining that human nature could live in the wing of a butterfly or the leaf of a tree. When we look upon lives so human and yet so small... We feel the same kind of obligation to these creatures that a deity might feel...

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I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it.

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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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A stiff apology is a second insult... The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.

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The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.

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We are passing into a social phase in which unless a heroic effort is made for human dignity and freedom, gold will be the sole method of government and therefore the sole standard of manners.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Government Quotes , Effort Quotes

Anyone who is not an anarchist agrees with having a policeman at the corner of the street; but the danger at present is that of finding the policeman half-way down the chimney or even under the bed.

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The truth is that there are no things for which men will make such herculean efforts as the things of which they know they are unworthy.

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The modern world seems to have no notion of preserving different things side by side, of allowing its proper and proportionate place to each, of saving the whole varied heritage of culture. It has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Different Quotes , Culture Quotes

For my part, I should be inclined to suggest that the chief object of education should be to restore simplicity. If you like to put it so, the chief object of education is not to learn things; nay, the chief object of education is to unlearn things.

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Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

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Physical science is like simple addition: it is either infallible or it is false.

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[Capitalism is] that commercial system in which supply immediately answers to demand, and in which everybody seems to be thoroughly dissatisfied and unable to get anything he wants.

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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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A man making the confession of any creed worth ten minutes' intelligent talk, is always a man who gains something and gives up something. So long as he does both he can create: for he is making an outline and a shape.

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What we call emancipation is always and of necessity simply the free choice of the soul between one set of limitations and another.

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Every man is important if he loses his life;and every man is funny if he loses his hat and has to run after it.

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The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.

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Be careful how you suggest things to me. For there is in me a madness which goes beyond martyrdom, the madness of an utterly idle man.

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It is not greedy to enjoy a good dinner, any more than it is to enjoy a good concert. But I do think there is something greedy about trying to enjoy the dinner and the concert at the same time.

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