Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

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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The professional soldier gains more and more power as the general courage of a community declines.

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They hate kings, they hate priests, they hate soldiers, they hate sailors. They distrust men of science, they denounce the middle classes, they despair of working men, but they adore humanity. Only they always speak of humanity as if it were a curious foreign nation. They are dividing themselves more and more from men to exalt the strange race of mankind. They are ceasing to be human in the effort to be humane.

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You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world.

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Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

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Poets do not go mad, but chess players do.

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Most Americans ... have a sort of permanent intoxication from within, a sort of invisible champagne.

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Humility is the mother of giants.

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My brother, Cecil Edward Chesterton, was born when I was about five years old; and, after a brief pause, began to argue. He continued to argue to the end. I am glad to think that through all those years we never stopped arguing; and we never once quarreled. Perhaps the principal objection to a quarrel is that it interrupts an argument.

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Modern man is educated to understand foreign languages and misunderstand foreigners.

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One pleasure attached to growing older is that many things seem to be growing younger; growing fresher and more lively than we once supposed them to be.

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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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Every man who will not have softening of the heart must at last have softening of the brain

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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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The martyr endured tortures to affirm his belief in truth but he never asserted his disbelief in torture.

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Earnest Freethinkers need not worry themselves so much about the persecutions of the past. Before the Liberal idea is dead or triumphant we shall see wars and persecutions the like of which the world has never seen.

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A man must be orthodox upon most things, or he will never even have time to preach his own heresy.

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There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.

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The cross cannot be defeated for it is defeat.

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The truth is that it is our attitude towards children that is right, and our attitude towards grown-up people that is wrong. Our attitude towards our equals in age consists in a servile solemnity, overlying a considerable degree of indifference or disdain. Our attitude towards children consists in a condescending indulgence, overlying an unfathomable respect.

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