Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Against a dark sky all flowers look like fireworks. There is something strange about them, at once vivid and secret, like flowers traced in fire in the phantasmal garden of a witch.

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One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

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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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The Christian is quite free to believe that there is a considerable amount of settled order and inevitable development in the universe. But the materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle.

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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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Faith is always at a disadvantage; it is a perpetually defeated thing which survives all conquerors.

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Only men to whom the family is sacred will ever have a standard or a status by which to criticize the State. They alone can appeal to something more holy than the gods of the city.

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Whether a man chooses to tell the truth in long sentences or short jokes is a problem analogous to whether he chooses to tell the truth in French or in German.

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Science must not impose any philosophy, any more than the telephone must tell us what to say.

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The oligarchic character of the modern English commonwealth does not rest, like many oligarchies, on the cruelty of the rich to the poor. It does not even rest on the kindness of the rich to the poor. It rests on the perennial and unfailing kindness of the poor to the rich.

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Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags.

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The only words that ever satisfied me as describing nature are the terms used in fairy books, charm, spell, enchantment; they express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery.

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

I never said a word against eminent men of science. What I complain of is a vague popular philosophy which supposes itself to be scientific when it is really nothing but a sort of new religion and an uncommonly nasty one. When people talked about the fall of man, they knew they were talking about a mystery, a thing they didn't understand. Now they talk about the survival of the fittest: they think they do understand it, whereas they have not merely no notion, they have an elaborately false notion of what the words mean.

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The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up.

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A thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.

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Architecture approaches nearer than any other art to being irrevocable because it is so difficult to get rid of.

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

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We must be clear about what we want to paint. This adds a further principle to our previous list of principles. We have said we must be fond of this world, even in order to change it.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Order Quotes , Society Quotes

Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of ideas. He is acquainted with ideas, and moves among them like a lion-tamer. Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are most dangerous is the man of no ideas. The man of no ideas will find the first idea fly to his head like wine to the head of a teetotaller.

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Most Americans are born drunk, and really require a little wine or beer to sober them.

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