Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

It is the chief value of legend to mix up the centuries while preserving the sentiment.

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Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.

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The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs. It is a disease which arises from men no having sufficient power of expression to utter and get rid of the element of art in their being.

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Daybreak is a never-ending glory; getting out of bed is a never ending nuisance.

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Thinking means connecting things, and stops if they cannot be connected.

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Evil comes at leisure like the disease. Good comes in a hurry like the doctor.

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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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I still think sincere pessimism the unpardonable sin.

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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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Hell is God's great compliment to the reality of human freedom and the dignity of human choice.

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The modern world... has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything.

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Most Americans are born drunk, and really require a little wine or beer to sober them. They have a sort of permanent intoxication from within, a sort of invisible champagne. Americans do not need to drink to inspire them to do anything, though they do sometimes, I think, need a little for the deeper and more delicate purpose of teaching them how to do nothing.

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Where does a wise man kick a pebble? On the beach. Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest.

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Great truths can only be forgotten and can never be falsified.

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The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman.

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The one created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the light of which we look at everything.

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There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.

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For fear of the newspapers politicians are dull, and at last they are too dull even for the newspapers.

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But a somewhat more liberal and sympathetic examination of mankind will convince us that the cross is even older than the gibbet, that voluntary suffering was before and independent of compulsory; and in short that in most important matters a man has always been free to ruin himself if he chose.

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The life of a thinking man will probably be divided into two parts -- the first in which he desires to exterminate modern thinkers, and the second in which he desires to watch them exterminating each other. ... Suppose, for instance, there is an old story and a new skeptic who is skeptical of the story. We have only to wait a little while for a yet newer skeptic who is skeptical of the skeptic. He will probably find the old notion actually a help in his new notion. This process is an abstract truth applying to anything, apart from agreement or disagreement.

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