Gilbert K. Chesterton 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

Latter-day scepticism is fond of calling itself progressive; but scepticism is really reactionary. Scepticism goes back; it attempts to unsettle what has already been settled. Instead of trying to break up new fields with its plough, it simply tries to break up the plough.

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Thrift is poetic because it is creative; waste is unpoetic because it is waste.

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I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible since.

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There should be a burnished tablet let into the ground on the spot where some courageous man first ate Stilton cheese, and survived.

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

Who would condescend to strike down the mere things that he does not fear? Who would debase himself to be merely brave, like any common prizefighter? Who would stoop to be fearless--like a tree? Fight the thing that you fear. You remember the old tale of the English clergyman who gave the last rites to the brigand of Sicily, and how on his death-bed the great robber said, 'I can give you no money, but I can give you advice for a lifetime: your thumb on the blade, and strike upwards.' So I say to you, strike upwards, if you strike at the stars.

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The real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.

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Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

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He who has no sympathy with myths has no sympathy with men.

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The Mass is very long and tiresome unless one loves God.

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Time and again, the Faith has to all appearances gone to the dogs. But each time, it was the dog that died.

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Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.

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

I said to him, "Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.

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All architecture is great architecture after sunset.

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

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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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The eagle has no liberty; he only has loneliness.

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Boys like romantic [fairy] tales; but babies like realistic tales - because they find them romantic...This proves that even nursery tales only echo an almost prenatal leap of interest and amazement. These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Running Quotes , Baby Quotes

Self-denial is the test and definition of self-government.

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