Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

In the modern conflict between the Smile and the Laugh, I am all in favor of laughing. The recent stage of culture and criticism might very well be summed up as the men who smile criticizing the men who laugh.

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I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a story-teller

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Think of all those ages through which men have had the courage to die, and then remember that we have actually fallen to talking about having the courage to live.

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When we reverence anything in the mature, it is their virtues or their wisdom, and this is an easy matter. But we reverence the faults and follies of children. We should probably come considerably nearer to the true conception of things if we treated all grown-up persons, of all titles and types, with precisely that dark affection and dazed respect with which we treat the infantile limitations.

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Is ditchwater dull? Naturalists with microscopes have told me that it teems with quiet fun.

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A good civilisation spreads over us freely like a tree, varying and yielding because it is alive. A bad civilisation stands up and sticks out above us like an umbrella-artificial, mathematical in shape; not merely universal, but uniform.

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Original sin is the only doctrine that's been empirically validated by 2,000 years of human history.

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You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.

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Some of the most frantic lies on the face of life are told with modesty and restraint; for the simple reason that only modesty and restraint will save them.

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If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.

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Free verse'? You may as well call sleeping in a ditch 'free architecture'.

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We fear men so much, because we fear God so little. One fear cures another. When man's terror scares you, turn your thoughts to the wrath of God.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Fear Quotes , Blessing Quotes

When it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.

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The poor complain that they are governed badly. The rich complain that they are governed at all.

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I am a journalist and have no earthly motives except curiosity and personal vanity.

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In truth, there are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogma and know it, and those who accept dogma and don't know it.

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Even in an empire of atheists the dead man is always sacred.

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Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian.

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Mysticism keeps mankind sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Long Quotes , Spirituality Quotes

A crown of roses is also a crown of thorns.

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