Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Life is indeed terribly complicated—to a man who has lost his principles.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Men Quotes , Principles Quotes

Now there is any amount of this nonsense cropping up among American cranks. Anybody may propose to establish coercive Eugenics; or enforce psychoanalysis that is, enforce confession without absolution.

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Just at present you only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the lamp by the light of the tree.

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There is something to be said for every error; but, whatever may be said for it, the most important thing to be said about it is that it is erroneous.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Mistake Quotes , Errors Quotes

Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when Joy is the fundamental thing in him, and Grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive state of mind; Praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; Joy is the uproarious labor by which all things live? Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this, that by its creed Joy becomes something gigantic, and Sadness something special and small.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Christian Quotes , Grief Quotes

There are two kinds of paradoxes. They are not so much the good and the bad, nor even the true and the false. Rather they are the fruitful and the barren; the paradoxes which produce life and the paradoxes that merely announce death. Nearly all modern paradoxes merely announce death.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Two Quotes , Kind Quotes

Men can construct a science with very few instruments, or with very plain instruments; but no one on earth could construct a science with unreliable instruments. A man might work out the whole of mathematics with a handful of pebbles, but not with a handful of clay which was always falling apart into new fragments, and falling together into new combinations. A man might measure heaven and earth with a reed, but not with a growing reed.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Fall Quotes , Men Quotes

It has been often said, very truly, that religion is the thing that makes the ordinary man feel extraordinary; it is an equally important truth that religion is the thing that makes the extraordinary man feel ordinary.

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Those who leave the tradition of truth do not escape into something which we call Freedom. They only escape into something else, which we call Fashion.

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I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. There are a great many human souls whom we should accept more kindly, and even appreciate more clearly, if we simply thought of them as people in a story.

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The golden age only comes to men when they have forgotten gold.

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

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Just the other day in the Underground I enjoyed the pleasure of offering my seat to three ladies.

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There are many ways to fall down, but there's only one way to stand up straight.

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Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. Unless a man starts on the strange assumption that he has never existed before, it is quite certain that he will never exist afterwards.

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Nothing is so remote from us as the thing which is not old enough to be history and not new enough to be news.

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Correctitude implies nowadays a formal or fastidious use of words; and what is wanted is not so much the correct as the living use of words. It is the memory of the meaning of a word which is the life of the word.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Truth Quotes , Memories Quotes

People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Book Quotes , Reading Quotes

Boyhood is a most complex and incomprehensible thing. Even when one has been through it, one does not understand what it was. A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been the boy.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Son Quotes , Men Quotes

Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , God Quotes , Animal Quotes