Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 53

• It seems to me,' said the other, 'That you are simply seeking a pretext to insult the Marquis.' By George!' said Syme facing round and looking at him, 'What a clever chap you are!

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Clever, Insult, Said

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.223, Simon and Schuster

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• Suppose, my dear Chadd, suppose it is we who are the idiots because we are not afraid of devils in the dark?

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Dark, Devil, Idiot

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• If we are bound to improve, we need not trouble to improve. The pure doctrine of progress is the best of all reasons for not being a progressive.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Progress, Doctrine, Needs

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.82, Simon and Schuster

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• Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalised.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Happiness, Literature, Mystery

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (1909). “Heretics”

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• All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Literature, Metaphor, Slang

  Defendant (1901) "Defence of Slang"

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• There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Cells, Differences, Inches

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• Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Freedom, Inspirational Life, Responsibility

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.28, Simon and Schuster

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• Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Annoyed, Literature, Want

  "The Sleep of Trees". Book by Jane Yolen, 1980.

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• Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Literature, Young

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• Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Science, Errors, Long

  1905 Heretics, ch.13.

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• The only defensible war is a war of defense.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Peace, War, Defense

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• When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Obscurity, Literature, Invisibility

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• True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Happiness, Power, Agriculture

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• Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Animal, Kind

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• And they that rule in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they have no graves as yet.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  England, Graves, Mets

  Gilbert Keith Chesterton, “Elegy In A Country Churchyard”

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• Large organization is loose organization. Nay, it would be almost as true to say that organization is always disorganization.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Organization, Would Be, Literature

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• You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Spiritual, Witty, Truth

  Daily News, February 25, 1905.

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• It is well sometimes to half understand a poem in the same manner that we half understand the world.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Half, World, Sometimes

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• You!" he cried. "You never hated because you never lived. I know what you are all of you, from first to last--you are the people in power! You are the police--the great, fat smiling men in blue and buttons! You are the Law, and you have never been broken. But is there a free soul alive that does not long to break you, only because you have never been broken?

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Blue, Law

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.281, Simon and Schuster

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• By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Confusion, May, Modern

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• The center of every man's existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like a toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Dream, Men, Insanity

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

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• There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats Grape-Nuts on principle.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Peace, Men, Nuts

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.176, Simon and Schuster

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• To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Complaining, Married, Born

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.41, Simon and Schuster

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• In the glad old days, before the rise of modern morbidities...it used to be thought a disadvantage to be misunderstood.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Misunderstood, Modern, Used

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• Free verse is like free love; it is a contradiction in terms.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Free Love, Contradiction, Term

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