Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 17

• The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Literature, Innocence, Gullibility

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• When it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Law, Wish

  Tremendous Trifles "The Twelve Men" (1909)

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• The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Love, Appreciation, Gratitude

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• Jokes are generally honest. Complete solemnity is always dishonest.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Honesty, Honest, Solemnity

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• Latter-day scepticism is fond of calling itself progressive; but scepticism is really reactionary. Scepticism goes back; it attempts to unsettle what has already been settled. Instead of trying to break up new fields with its plough, it simply tries to break up the plough.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Trying, Calling, Fields

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• The simplification of anything is always sensational.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Sensational, Simplification

  "Varied Types". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1903.

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• With every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story which we are certain to misunderstand.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Stories, Steps, Middle

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• I agree with the realistic Irishman who said he preferred to prophesy after the event.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Advice, Events, Realistic

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• 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.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Doe, Contrary

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• There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Inspirational, Education, Book

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• In our time the blasphemies are threadbare. Pessimism is now patently, as it always was essentially, more commonplace than piety. Profanity is now more than an affectation - it is a
  convention. The curse against God is Exercise I in the primer of minor poetry.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Exercise, Pessimism, Conventions

  "The Defendant". Book by G. K. Chesterton, 1901.

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• There are two kinds of charlatan: the man who is called a charlatan, and the man who really is one. The first is the quack who cures you; the second is the highly qualified person who doesn't.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Two, Firsts

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• Let us not decide what is good, but let it be considered good not to decide it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.134, Simon and Schuster

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• The most unfathomable schools and sages have never attained to the gravity which dwells in the eyes of a baby of three months old. It is the gravity of astonishment at the universe, and astonishment at the universe is not mysticism, but a transcendent common-sense. The fascination of children lies in this: that with each of them all things are remade, and the universe is put again upon its trial.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Baby, Children, Lying

  "The Defendant". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1901.

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• It has always been one of my unclerical sermons to myself, that that remark which Peter made on seeing the vision of a single hour, ought to be made by us all, in contemplating every panoramic change in the long Vision we call life... "It is good for us to be here - it is good for us to be here", repeating itself eternally.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Faith, Inspiration, Long

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• It is customary to complain of the bustle and strenuousness of our epoch. But in truth the chief mark of our epoch is a profound laziness and fatigue; and the fact is that the real laziness is the cause of the apparent bustle.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Real, Profound, Causes

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.93, Simon and Schuster

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• For us who live in cities Nature is not natural. Nature is supernatural. Just as monks watched and strove to get a glimpse of heaven, so we watch and strive to get a glimpse of earth. It is as if men had cake and wine every day but were sometimes allowed common bread.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Nature, Wine, Men

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• Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front--

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Clouds, Tree, Secret

  "The Man Who Was Thursday". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, Ch. XIV : The Six Philosophers, 1908.

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• The lunatic is the man who lives in a small world but thinks it is a large one; he is the man who lives in a tenth of the truth, and thinks it is the whole. The madman cannot conceive any cosmos outside a certain tale or conspiracy or vision.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Thinking, Vision

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• The secularists have not wrecked divine things; but the secularists have wrecked secular things, if that is any comfort to them. The Titans did not scale heaven; but they laid waste the world.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Heaven, Atheism, Nihilism

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.106, Simon and Schuster

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• Nobody understands the nature of the Church, or the ringing note of the creed descending from antiquity, who does not realize that the whole world once very nearly died of broadmindedness and the brotherhood of all religions.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Brotherhood, Church, Doe

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• It is not merely true that a creed unites men. Nay, a difference of creed unites men - so long as it is a clear difference. A boundary unites. Many a magnanimous Moslem and chivalrous Crusader must have been nearer to each other, because they were both dogmatists, than any two agnostics. "I say God is One," and "I say God is One but also Three," that is the beginning of a good quarrelsome, manly friendship.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Friendship, Men, Two

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.256, Simon and Schuster

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• Odd, isn't it, that a thief and a vagabond should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and frivolous, and without fruit for God or man?

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Fruit, Thieves

  "The Queer Feet". "The Innocence of Father Brown", Book by G. K. Chesterton, 1911.

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• When men have come to the edge of a precipice, it is the lover of life who has the spirit to leap backwards, and only the pessimist who continues to believe in progress.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Believe, Men, Progress

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• Forms of expression always appear turgid to those who do not share the emotions they represent.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Fear, Expression, Emotion

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