Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.

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A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert - himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt - the Divine Reason.

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

I have formed a very clear conception of patriotism. I have generally found it thrust into the foreground by some fellow who has something to hide in the background. I have seen a great deal of patriotism; and I have generally found it the last refuge of the scoundrel.

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Do not, I beseech you be troubled by the increase of forces already in dissolution. You have mistake the hour of the night: it is already morning.

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But there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.

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To be simple is the best thing in the world; to be modest is the next best thing. I am not sure about being quiet.

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Humour is meant, in a literal sense, to make game of man; that is, to dethrone him from his official dignity and hunt him like game.

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Science only means knowledge; and for [Greek] ancients it did only mean knowledge. Thus the favorite science of the Greeks was Astronomy, because it was as abstract as Algebra. ... We may say that the great Greek ideal was to have no use for useful things. The Slave was he who learned useful things; the Freeman was he who learned useless things. This still remains the ideal of many noble men of science, in the sense they do desire truth as the great Greeks desired it; and their attitude is an external protest against vulgarity of utilitarianism.

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Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful.

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Nine out of ten of what we call new ideas are simply old mistakes.

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One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time.

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Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde.

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All we know of the Missing Link is that he is missing - and he won't be missed either.

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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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The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them.

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[V]ariety of climate should always go with stability of abode.... an Englishman’s house is not only his castle; it is his fairy castle. Clouds and colours of every varied dawn and eve are perpetually touching and turning it from clay to gold, or from gold to ivory. There is a line of woodland beyond a corner of my garden which is literally different on every one of the three hundred and sixty-five days. Sometimes it seems as near as a hedge, and sometimes as far as a faint and fiery evening cloud.

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People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.

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The decay of society is praised by artists as the decay of a corpse is praised by worms.

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The modern world is a crowd of very rapid racing cars all brought to a standstill and stuck in a block of traffic.

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A Catholic is a person who has plucked up courage to face the incredible and inconceivable idea that something else may be wiser than he is.

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