Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 48

• We actually love ourselves more than we love joy.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Joy

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (1909). “Heretics”

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• I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Thinking

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.23, Simon and Schuster

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• Every true artist does feel, consciously or unconsciously, that he is touching transcendental truths; that his images are shadows of things seen through the veil. In other words, the natural mystic does know that there is something there, something behind the clouds or within the trees; but he believes that the pursuit of beauty is the way to find it; that imagination is a sort of incantation that can call it up.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Believe, Artist, Clouds

  "The Everlasting Man". Book by G. K. Chesterton, V: Man and Mythologies, 1925.

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• There are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Fall, Orthodoxy, Infinity

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.75, Simon and Schuster

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• That all war is physically frightful is obvious; but if that were a moral verdict, there would be no difference between a torturer and a surgeon. There are certain intellectuals who are too bright to be content with merely praising peace but who are infuriated by anybody praising war. If no war is possible, all criminality has its chance

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  War, Differences, Would Be

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• If you spell a word wrong you have some temptation to think it wrong.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Thinking, Temptation, Spells

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• Boys like romantic [fairy] tales; but babies like realistic tales - because they find them romantic...This proves that even nursery tales only echo an almost prenatal leap of interest and amazement. These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Running, Baby, Wine

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• There is, therefore, about all complete conviction a kind of huge helplessness.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Kind, Conviction, Huge

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.62, Simon and Schuster

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• Sticking to one woman is a small price to pay for so much as having seen one woman.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Pay, One Woman

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• Education is implication. It is not the things you say which children
  respect; when you say things, they very commonly laugh and do the opposite.
  It is the things you assume which really sink into them. It is the things
  you forget even to teach that they learn.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Children, Opposites, Laughing

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• Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Love Is, Lasts, Blind

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.52, Simon and Schuster

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• In truth, there are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogma and know it, and those who accept dogma and don't know it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Two, People, Dogma

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• It is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin, a creature who does not exist. It is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he didn't.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Doe, Looks, Interviews

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.6, Simon and Schuster

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• People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Book, Reading, Simple

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.199, Simon and Schuster

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• Excuse me if I enjoy myself rather obviously! I don't often have the luck to have a dream like this. It is new to me for a nightmare to lead me to a lobster. It is commonly the other way.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Dream, Luck, Lobster

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• The classes that wash most are those that work least.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Class

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.362, Simon and Schuster

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• If a man called Christmas Day a mere hypocritical excuse for drunkenness and gluttony, that would be false, but it would have a fact hidden in it somewhere. But when Bernard Shaw says the Christmas Day is only a conspiracy kept up by poulterers and wine merchants from strictly business motives, then he says something which is not so much false as startling and arrestingly foolish. He might as well say that the two sexes were invented by jewellers who wanted to sell wedding rings.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Christmas, Sex, Wine

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• Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Sunset, Oscars, Pay

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.42, Simon and Schuster

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• He has come to the most dreadful conclusion a literary man can come to, the conclusion that the ordinary view is the right one. It is only the last and wildest kind of courage that can stand on a tower before ten thousand people and tell them that twice two is four.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Views, Two

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.152, Simon and Schuster

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• For Tommy, on that hot and empty afternoon, was in a state of mind in which grown-up people go away and write books about their whole world, and stories about what it is like to be married, and plays about the important problems of modern times. Tommy, being only ten years old, was not able to do harm on this large and handsome scale.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Book, Writing, Years

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• Great truths can only be forgotten and can never be falsified.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Forgotten

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• Your offer," he said, "is far too idiotic to be declined.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Said, Idiotic, Offers

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.150, Simon and Schuster

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• I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Book, Writing, Epic

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• Properly speaking, of course, there is no such thing as a return to nature, because there is no such thing as a departure from it. The phrase reminds one of the slightly intoxicated gentleman who gets up in his own dining room and declares firmly that he must be getting home.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Home, Gentleman, Dining

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• Thrift is poetic because it is creative; waste is unpoetic because it is waste.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Creative, Waste, Dustbin

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.302, Simon and Schuster

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