Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 43

• 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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• This is the perpetual and pitiful tragedy of the practical man in practical affairs. He always begins with a flourish of contempt for what he calls theorizing and what people who can do it call thinking. He will not wait for logic-that is, in the most exact sense, he will not listen to reason. It will therefore appear to him an idle and ineffectual proceeding to say that there is a reason for his present failure. Nevertheless, it may be well to say it, and to try and make it clear even to him.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Wisdom, Men, Thinking

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• What is education? Properly speaking, there is no such thing as education. Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. Whatever the soul is like, it will have to be passed on somehow, consciously or unconsciously, and that transition may be called education. ... What we need is to have a culture before we hand it down. In other words, it is a truth, however sad and strange, that we cannot give what we have not got, and cannot teach to other people what we do not know ourselves.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Wisdom, Hands, People

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• But those dealing in the actual manufacture of mind are dealing in a very explosive material. The material is not merely the clay of which man is master, but the truths or semblances of truth which have a certain mastery over man. The material is explosive because it must be taken seriously. The men writing books really are throwing bombs.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Book, Taken, Writing

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• Even in a minute instance, it is best to look first to the main tendencies of Nature. A particular flower may not be dead in early winter, but the flowers are dying; a particular pebble may never be wetted with the tide, but the tide is coming in. To the scientific eye all human history is a series of collective movements, destructions or migrations, like the massacre of flies in winter or the return of birds in spring.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Spring, Flower, Eye

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• He walked by instinct along one white road, on which early birds hopped and sang, and found himself outside a fenced garden. There he saw the sister of Gregory, the girl with the gold-red hair, cutting lilac before breakfast, with the great unconscious gravity of a girl.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Girl, Cutting, Garden

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.283, Simon and Schuster

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• Just the other day in the Underground I enjoyed the pleasure of offering my seat to three ladies.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Food, Offering, Three

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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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• Every time a man knocks on a brothel door, he is really knocking for God

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Doors, Knocking

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• As long as the vision of heaven is always changing, the vision of earth will be exactly the same. No ideal will remain long enough to be realized, or even partly realized. The modern young man will never change his environment; for he will always change his mind.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Long, Heaven

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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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• There is only one thing that it requires real courage to say, and that is a truism.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Real, Truism, Real Courage

  "G.F. Watts". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1904.

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• When men cease to believe in God, they will believe in anything

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Believe, Men, Believe In God

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• It is very foolish of a man to be frightened of a skeleton, for Nature has put an insurmountable obstacle against running away from it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Running, Men, Skeletons

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• Every one on the earth should believe that he has something to give to the world which cannot otherwise be given.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Believe, Giving, World

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• There are many ways to fall down, but there's only one way to stand up straight.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Fall, Way, Falling Down

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