Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic ignorance.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Ignorance Quotes , Poetic Quotes

Destiny is but a phrase of the weak human heart - the dark apology for every error. The strong and virtuous admit no destiny. On earth conscience guides; in heaven God watches. And destiny is but the phantom we invoke to silence the one and dethrone the other.

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To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once.

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To do Mohammed justice, his main attack was against the idolatries of Asia. Only he thought, just as the Arians did and just as the Unitarians do, that he could attack them better with a greater approximation to plain theism. What distinguishes his heresy from anything like an Arian or Albigensian heresy is that, as it sprang up on the borders of Christendom, it could spread outwards to a barbaric world.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Justice Quotes , Islam Quotes

The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.

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

...but out of the desert, from the dry places and the dreadful suns, come the cruel children of the lonely God; the real Unitarians who with scimitar in hand have laid waste the world. For it is not well for God to be alone.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Lonely Quotes , Children 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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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Mean Quotes , Half Quotes

Folk-lore means that the soul is sane, but that the universe is wild and full of marvels. Realism means that the world is dull and full of routine, but that the soul is sick and screaming. The problem of the fairy tale is: what will a healthy man do with a fantastic world? The problems of the modern novel is: what will a madman do with a dull world? In the fairy tales the cosmos goes mad; but the hero does not go mad. In the modern novels the hero is mad before the book begins, and suffers from the harsh steadiness and cruel sanity of the cosmos.

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In all legends men have thought of women as sublime separately but horrible in a herd.

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There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there.

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In a world where everything is ridiculous, nothing can be ridiculed. You cannot unmask a mask.

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(Tradition) is the democracy of the dead.

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If you happen to read fairy tales, you will observe that one idea runs from one end of them to the other--the idea that peace and happiness can only exist on some condition. This idea, which is the core of ethics, is the core of the nursery-tales.

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

The woman does not work because the man tells her to work and she obeys. On the contrary, the woman works because she has told the man to work and he hasn’t obeyed.

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Every politician is emphatically a promising politician.

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No one can understand Paris and its history who does not understand that its fierceness is the balance and justification of its frivolity. It is called a city of pleasure; but it may also very specially be called a city of pain. The crown of roses is also a crown of thorns. Its people are too prone to hurt others, but quite ready also to hurt themselves. They are martyrs for religion, they are martyrs for irreligion; they are even martyrs for immorality.

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A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.

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Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate.

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Then I only wondered who put the toys in the stocking; now I wonder who put the stocking by the bed, and the bed in the room, and the room in the house, and the house on the planet, and the great planet in the void.

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Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , House Quotes , Bed Quotes

There are two kinds of peacemakers in the modern world; and they are both, though in various ways, a nuisance. The first peacemaker is the man who goes about saying that he agrees with everybody. He confuses everybody. The second peacemaker is the man who goes about saying that everybody agrees with him. He enrages everybody. Between the two of them they produce a hundred times more disputes and distractions than we poor pugnacious people would ever have thought of in our lives.

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