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Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 53

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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

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

You have not wasted your time; you have helped to save the world. We are not buffoons, but very desperate men at war with a vast conspiracy.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
War, Men, World
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.231, Simon and Schuster

If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Beautiful, Hope, Stars

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

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.

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

A faith is that which is able to survive a mood.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Able, Mood

A man cannot have the energy to produce good art without having the energy to wish to pass beyond it.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Art, Men, Wish
Gilbert K. Chesterton (1909). “Heretics”

Adventure is the champagne of life, but I prefer my champagne and my adventures dry.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Adventure, Dry, Champagne

Honour is a luxury for aristocrats, but it is a necessity for hall-porters.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Luxury, Honor, Halls
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.190, Simon and Schuster

I have investigated the dust-heaps of humanity, and found a treasure in all of them. I have found that humanity is not incidentally engaged, but eternally and systematically engaged, in throwing gold into the gutter and diamonds into the sea.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Dust, Sea, Humanity
"The Defendant". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1901.

Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Life, Lying, Waiting
"Orthodoxy". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, Chapter VI : The Paradoxes of Christianity, 1908.

He who has no sympathy with myths has no sympathy with men.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Mythology, Myth
"The Everlasting Man". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, Part I: On the Creature Called Man, 1925.

Marriage is a sort of poetical see-saw.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Saws
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.285, Simon and Schuster

The philosophy of this world may be founded on facts, but its business is run on spiritual impressions and atmospheres.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Running, Spiritual, Philosophy
"The Club of Queer Trades". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1905.

Obviously if any actions, even a lunatic's, can be causeless, determinism is done for. If the chain of causation can be broken for a madman, it can be broken for a man.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Broken, Done
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.11, Simon and Schuster

If a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ's.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Jesus, Men, World
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.12, Simon and Schuster

Precisely because our political speeches are meant to be reported, they are not worth reporting. Precisely because they are carefully designed to be read, nobody reads them.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Political, Speech, Political Speeches
"All Things Considered". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1908.

Religious and philosophical beliefs are, indeed, as dangerous as fire, and nothing can take from them that beauty of danger. But there is only one way of really guarding ourselves against the excessive danger of them, and that is to be steeped in philosophy and soaked in religion.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Religious, Philosophy, Philosophical
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.242, Simon and Schuster

You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes.

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

There is always in the healthy mind an obscure prompting that religion teaches us rather to dig than to climb; that if we could once understand the common clay of earth we should understand everything. Similarly, we have the sentiment that if we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse. This is the great truth which has always lain at the back of baby-worship, and which will support it to the end.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Baby, Stars, Children
"The Defendant". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1901.

The new community which the capitalists are now constructing will be a very complete and absolute community; and one which will tolerate nothing really independent of itself.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Independent, Community, Tolerate
"Utopia of Usurers". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, pp. 33-34, 1917.

The cause which is blocking all progress today is the subtle scepticism which whispers in a million ears that things are not good enough to be worth improving. If the world is good we are revolutionaries, if the world is evil we must be conservatives. These essays, futile as they are considered as serious literature, are yet ethically sincere, since they seek to remind men that things must be loved first and improved afterwards.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Block, Men, Evil
"The Defendant". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1901.

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Inspirational, Children, Growing Up
'The Napoleon of Notting Hill' (1904) bk. 1, ch. 1

To say that a man is an idealist is merely to say that he is a man.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Life, Men, Idealist
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.221, Simon and Schuster

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