Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.

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Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest. But what does he do if there is no forest? He grows a forest to hide it in.

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Over-civilization and barbarism are within an inch of each other. And a mark of both is the power of medicine-men.

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Plato was right, but not quite right.

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Your offer," he said, "is far too idiotic to be declined.

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A thing may be too sad to be believed or too wicked to be believed or too good to be believed; but it cannot be too absurd to be believed in this planet of frogs and elephants, of crocodiles and cuttle-fish.

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The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of something he cannot understand.

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Large organization is loose organization. Nay, it would be almost as true to say that organization is always disorganization.

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Unfortunately, 19th-century scientists were just as ready to jump to the conclusion that any guess about nature was an obvious fact, as were 17th-century sectarians to jump to the conclusion that any guess about Scripture was the obvious explanation . . . . and this clumsy collision of two very impatient forms of ignorance was known as the quarrel of Science and Religion.

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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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When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it.

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All literary style, especially national style, is made up of such coincidences, which are a spiritual sort of puns. That is why style is untranslatable.

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It is very good for a man to talk about what he does not understand; as long as he understands that he does not understand it.

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Dear Sir: Regarding your article 'What's Wrong with the World?' I am. Yours truly.

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Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?

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In a world where everything is ridiculous, nothing can be ridiculed. You cannot unmask a mask.

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The determining bulk of Scotch people had heard of golf ever since they had heard of God and often considered the two as of equal importance.

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Earth will grow worse till men redeem it, And wars more evil, ere all wars cease.

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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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I still think sincere pessimism the unpardonable sin.

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