Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

We cannot fling ourselves into the blank future; we can only call up images from the past. This being so, the important principle follows, that how many images we have largely depends on how much past we have.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Past Quotes , Important Quotes

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Inspirational Quotes , Thanksgiving Quotes

There is no obligation on us to be richer, or busier, or more efficient, or more productive, or more progressive, or any way worldlier or wealthier, if it does not make us happier.

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Spring never is spring unless it comes too soon.

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Passion makes every detail important.

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Nobody notices postmen, yet they have passions like other men.

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The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.

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Marriage is a sort of poetical see-saw.

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CIVILISATION is not to be judged by the rapidity of communication, but by the value of what is communicated.

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The moderns do not realize modernity.

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And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine, "I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine."

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Wine Quotes , Water Quotes

The hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle. Upon this paradox, we might almost say upon this jest, all the literature of our faith is founded.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Stars Quotes , Hands Quotes

Catholicism is not ritualism; it may in the future be fighting some sort of superstitious and idolatrous exaggeration of ritual. Catholicism is not asceticism; it has again and again in the past repressed fanatical and cruel exaggerations of asceticism. Catholicism is not mere mysticism; it is even now defending human reason against the mere mysticism of the Pragmatists.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Fighting Quotes , Past Quotes

The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.

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

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I tell you naught for your comfort, Yea, naught for your desire, Save that the sky grows darker yet And the sea rises higher.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Sea Quotes , Sky Quotes

By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Confusion Quotes , May Quotes

A good joke is the closest thing we have to divine revelation.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Divine Revelation Quotes , Revelations Quotes

Americans have a taste for…rocking-chairs. A flippant critic might suggest that they select rocking-chairs so that, even when they are sitting down, they need not be sitting still. Something of this restlessness in the race may really be involved in the matter; but I think the deeper significance of the rocking-chair may still be found in the deeper symbolism of the rocking-horse. I think there is behind all this fresh and facile use of wood a certain spirit that is childish in the good sense of the word; something that is innocent, and easily pleased.

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

Women have a thirst for order and beauty as for something physical; there is a strange female power of hating ugliness and waste as good men can only hate sin and bad men virtue.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Love Quotes , Hate Quotes