Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

When "everyone knows" that something is so, it is always more interesting and often illuminating to assumeexactly the opposite, and to see where that leads.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Opposites Quotes , Interesting Quotes

In the end it will not matter to us whether we wrote well or ill; whether we fought with flails or reeds. It will matter to us greatly on what side we fought.

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Savages and modern artists are alike strangely driven to create something uglier than themselves. but the artists find it harder.

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I believe in preaching to the converted; for I have generally found that the converted do not understand their own religion.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Believe Quotes , Found Quotes

If Christianity should happen to be true - that is to say, if its God is the real God of the universe - then defending it may mean talking about anything and everything.

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Tolerance is the virtue of those who don't believe anything.

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The voice of the special rebels and prophets, recommending discontent, should, as I have said, sound now and then suddenly, like a trumpet. But the voices of the saints and sages, recommending contentment, should sound unceasingly, like the sea.

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...a figure of speech can often get into a crack too small for a definition.

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The sceptics, like bees, give their one sting and die.

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There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Inspirational Quotes , Earth Quotes

Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf; is better than a whole loaf.

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I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Inspirational Quotes , Motivational Quotes

Tradition is only democracy extended through time; it may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who are merely walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father.

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A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true.

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Surely we cannot take an open question like the supernatural and shut it with a bang, turning the key of the madhouse on all the mystics of history. You cannot take the region of the unknown and calmly say that, though you know nothing about it, you know all the gates are locked. We do not know enough about the unknown to know that it is unknowable.

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I've searched all the parks in all the cities - and found no statues of Committees.

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There is a case for telling the truth; there is a case for avoiding the scandal; but there is no possible defense for the man who tells the scandal, but does not tell the truth

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Truth Quotes , Honesty Quotes

There are two kinds of paradoxes. They are not so much the good and the bad, nor even the true and the false. Rather they are the fruitful and the barren; the paradoxes which produce life and the paradoxes that merely announce death. Nearly all modern paradoxes merely announce death.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Two Quotes , Kind Quotes

Every sane man recognises that unlimited liberty is anarchy, or rather is nonentity. The civic idea of liberty is to give the citizen a province of liberty; a limitation within which a citizen is a king.

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The cross cannot be defeated for it is defeat.

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