Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 42

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

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Simple, Sweat, Simplicity

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• It is the friction of two spiritual things, of tradition and invention, or of substance and symbol, from which the mind takes fire. The creeds condemned as complex have something like the secret of sex; they can breed thoughts.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Spiritual, Sex, Fire

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• Humility is the mother of giants.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Mother, Humility, Giants

  "The Hammer of God". Short story by G. K. Chesterton, December 1910.

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• There are no new ideas about female education.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Ideas, Annoying, New Ideas

  "What's Wrong with the World". Book by G. K. Chesterton, Part Four: Education: Or the Mistake About the Child, Ch. 14: Folly and Female Education, 1910.

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• We all have a little weakness, which is very natural but rather misleading, for supposing that this epoch must be the end of the world because it will be the end of us. How future generations will get on without us is indeed, when we come to think of it, quite a puzzle. But I suppose they will get on somehow, and may possibly venture to revise our judgments as we have revised earlier judgments.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Thinking, Civilization, Supposing That

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• One can no more have a private religion than one can have a private sun or a private moon.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Moon, Religion, Sun

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• Any one of the strange laws we suffer is a compromise between a fad and a vested interest.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Law, Suffering, Fads

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• Adventure is the champagne of life.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Inspirational, Inspirational Life, Adventure

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• ONCE remove the old arena of theological quarrels, and you will throw open the whole world to the most horrible, the most hopeless, the most endless, the most truly interminable quarrels; the untheological quarrels.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  World, Arena, Hopeless

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• Literature and fiction are two entirely different things. Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Two, Luxury, Different

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

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• Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Strong, Children, Knights

  "Tremendous Trifles". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1909.

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• Silver is sometimes more valuable than gold, that is, in large quantities.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Gold, Sometimes, Silver

  "The Queer Feet: A Father Brown Mystery". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1911.

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• How much happier you would be, how much more of you there would be, if the hammer of a higher God could smash your small cosmos.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Would Be, Hammers, Cosmos

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.13, Simon and Schuster

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• Every work of art has one indispensable mark ... the center of it is simple, however much the fulfillment may be complicated.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Simple, May

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• The first fact about the celebration of a birthday is that it is a way of affirming defiantly, and even flamboyantly, that it is a good thing to be alive.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Alive, Way, Firsts

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• Grey is a colour that always seems on the eve of changing to some other colour.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Color, Grey, Colour

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• A great deal of contemporary criticism reads to me like a man saying, 'Of course I do not like green cheese. I am very fond of brown sherry.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Criticism, Green

  1933 All I Survey,'On Jonathan Swift'.

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• Before the Roman came to Rye or out to severn strode, / The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Rolling, Made, Drunkards

  'The Rolling English Road' (1914)

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• There is nothing harder to learn than painting and nothing which most people take less trouble about learning.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Education, People, Painting

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