Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 42

• The modern world is filled with men who hold dogmas so strongly that they do not even know they are dogmas.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Believe, Men, World

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.244, Simon and Schuster

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• Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Relationship, Uncles, Men

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• The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Dog, Drinking, Men

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• Thoughts on the Merits of Work The worst of work nowadays is what happens to people when they cease to work.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Retirement, People, Merit

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• A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims permanence, like a dogma. People ask why we have no typical architecture of the modern world, like impressionism in painting. Surely it is obviously because we have not enough dogmas; we cannot bear to see anything in the sky that is solid and enduring, anything in the sky that does not change like the clouds of the sky.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Clouds, Sky, People

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• Lord! what a strange world in which a man cannot remain unique even by taking the trouble to go mad!

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Unique, Men, Mad

  "The Napoleon of Notting Hill". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1904.

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• Bigotry is an incapacity to conceive seriously the alternative to a proposition.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Alternatives, Incapacity, Propositions

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• Anyone who is not an anarchist agrees with having a policeman at the corner of the street; but the danger at present is that of finding the policeman half-way down the chimney or even under the bed.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Bed, Half, Way

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• 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.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Two, People

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• While once it was the rank and file that cheered with all the partisan passions at their heights, today it is the party leaders who are cheering themselves; and all by themselves. The mob that is their audience is in one vast universal trance, thinking about something else.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Leadership, Cheer, Party

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• He said he didn't very well understand how George was going to sleep any more than he did now, seeing that there were only twenty-four hours in each day.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Funny, Time, Sleep

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• I doubt if anyone of any tenderness or imagination can see the hand of a child and not be a little frightened of it. It is awful to think of the essential human energy moving so tiny a thing; it is like imagining that human nature could live in the wing of a butterfly or the leaf of a tree. When we look upon lives so human and yet so small... We feel the same kind of obligation to these creatures that a deity might feel...

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Children, Moving, Butterfly

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

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• Children feel the whiteness of the lily with a graphic and passionate clearness which we cannot give them at all. The only thing we can give them is information-the information that if you break the lily in two it won't grow again.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Children, Two, Giving

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• All real democracy is an attempt like that of a jolly hostess to bring the shy people out.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Real, People, Democracy

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• The most valuable book we can read, about countries we have visited, is that which recalls to us something that we did notice, but did not notice that we noticed.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Country, Book, Valuable

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• All that we call spirit and art and ecstacy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forgot.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Mean, Awful

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.38, Simon and Schuster

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• What a glorious garden of wonders the lights of Broadway would be to anyone lucky enough to be unable to read.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Reading, Garden, Light

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• A man running after a hat is not half so ridiculous as a man running after a woman.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Running, Women, Half

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• The average woman is at the head of something with which she can do as she likes; the average man has to obey orders and do nothing else.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Women, Average, Order

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• There are many books which we think we have read when we have not. There are, at least, many that we think we remember when we do not. An original picture was, perhaps, imprinted upon the brain, but it has changed with our own changing minds. We only remember our remembrance.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Memories, Book, Thinking

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• Students of popular science... are always insisting that Christianity and Buddhism are very much alike, especially Buddhism. This is generally believed, and I believed it myself until I read a book giving the reasons for it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Book, Buddhism, Giving

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.97, Simon and Schuster

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• Art is the signature of man.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Men, Signatures

  "The Everlasting Man". Book by G. K. Chesterton, Part I: On the Creature Called Man, 1925.

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• Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Evil, Levels

  "The Flying Stars: A Father Brown Mystery". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1911.

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• The Devil's walking parody; On all four-footed things.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Horse, Devil, Four

  1900 'The Donkey'.

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• To be simple is the best thing in the world.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Simple, Sweat, Simplicity

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