Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 11

• Modern man is staggering and losing his balance because he is being pelted with little pieces of alleged fact which are native to the newspapers; and, if they turn out not to be facts, that is still more native to newspapers.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Balance, Pieces

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• There are no boring subjects, only disinterested minds.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Mind, Boring, Subjects

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• If it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly. (on not perfectionism to put things off) .

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Inspirational, Perfectionism, Not Perfect

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• Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Faith, Believe, Inspiration

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.185, Simon and Schuster

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• Pessimism is not in being tired of evil but in being tired of good. Despair does not lie in being weary of suffering, but in being weary of joy. It is when for some reason or other good things in a society no longer work that the society begins to decline; when its food does not feed, when its cures do not cure, when its blessings refuse to bless.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Lying, Tired, Blessing

  "The Everlasting Man". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, VIII: The End of the World, 1925.

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

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  World, Ridiculous, Mask

  "The Comic Spirit of G.K. Chesterton: A Study of the Humor, Wit, and Satire in His Work". Book by Aileen Dorothy Lorberg, 1938.

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• Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Rags, Hot, Christianity

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.89, Simon and Schuster

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• Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Birthday, Book, Writing

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• The only way to be sure of catching a train is to miss the one before it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Funny, Travel, Missing

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• The modern world seems to have no notion of preserving different things side by side, of allowing its proper and proportionate place to each, of saving the whole varied heritage of culture. It has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Different, Culture, Heritage

  "Holding on to Romanticism". "The Illustrated London News" Magazine, May 2, 1931.

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• Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long as you have one good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem".

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Spiritual, Women, Long

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• That is the one eternal education: to be sure enough that something is true that you dare to tell it to a child.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Children, Enough, Dare

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.328, Simon and Schuster

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• Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  New York, Mean, Years

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• There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Two, Allies, Four

  "The Man Who Was Thursday". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, Ch. VIII : The Professor Explains, 1908.

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• Happiness is not only a hope, but also in some strange manner a memory ... we are all kings in exile.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Kings, Memories, Strange

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• There are two ways of dealing with nonsense in this world. One way is to put nonsense in the right place; as when people put nonsense into nursery rhymes. The other is to put nonsense in the wrong place; as when they put it into educational addresses, psychological criticisms, and complaints against nursery rhymes or other normal amusements of mankind.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Educational, Two, People

  "Child Psychology and Nonsense" by Gilbert K. Chesterton, October 15, 1921.

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• If the world grows to worldly, it can be rebuked by the Church; but if the Church grows to worldly, it cannot be adequately rebuked for worldlyness by the world.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Church, World, Grows

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• It isn't that they can't see the solution. It's that they can't see the problem. They can't see the problem if they are looking in the wrong place. They can't see the problem if they have blinders on - for 'none are so blind as those that will not see'.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Healing, Problem, Blind

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• Truths turn into dogmas the minute they are disputed.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Truth, Lying, Dogma

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• The poor complain that they are governed badly. The rich complain that they are governed at all.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Complaining, Rich, Poor

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• Atheism is too theological.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Atheism, Theological

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• Life is serious all the time, but living cannot be. You may have all the solemnity you wish in your neckties, but in anything important (such as sex, death, and religion), you must have mirth or you will have madness.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Sex, Wish, Important

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• Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Dirty, Self, Circles

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• Why do all the clerks and navvies in the railway trains look so sad and tired, so very sad and tired? I will tell you. It is because they know that the train is going right. It is because they know that whatever place they have taken a ticket for that place they will reach. It is because after they have passed Sloane Square they know that the next station must be Victoria, and nothing but Victoria. Oh, their wild rapture! oh, their eyes like stars and their souls again in Eden, if the next station were unaccountably Baker Street!

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Stars, Taken, Tired

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.145, Simon and Schuster

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• The Reformer is always right about what's wrong. However, he's often wrong about what is right.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Reformers

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