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Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes
A businessman is
the only man who is forever apologizing for his occupation.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
A good novel tells
us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about
its author.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
A man does not
know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
A man who says
that no patriot should attack the war until it is over... is saying no
good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
A puritan is a
person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
A room without
books is like a body without a soul.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
A stiff apology is
a second insult... The injured party does not want to be compensated
because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been
hurt.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
A teacher who is
not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
A woman uses her
intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
A yawn is a silent
shout.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
All architecture
is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a
nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
All conservatism
is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as
they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a
torrent of change.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
All slang is
metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
An adventure is
only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an
adventure wrongly considered.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
An inconvenience
is an adventure wrongly considered.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
And they that rule
in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they have
no graves as yet.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
And when it rains
on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would
be no rainbow.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Art consists of
limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Art, like
morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Artistic
temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Being "contented"
ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being
content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it
and resigned to living in it; it ought to mean appreciating all there
is in such a position.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Brave men are all
vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their
toughness in the middle.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
But there is good
news yet to hear and fine things to be seen before we go to Paradise by
way of Kensal Green.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Christianity has
not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not
tried.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Coincidences are
spiritual puns.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Compromise used to
mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen
it really seems to mean that half a loaf ;is better than a whole loaf.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Courage is almost
a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the
form of readiness to die.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Cruelty is,
perhaps, the worst kid of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the
worst kind of cruelty.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Democracy means
government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the
badly educated.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Do not free a
camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a
camel.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Drink because you
are happy, but never because you are miserable.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Education is
simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to
another.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Education is the
period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not
know, about something you do not want to know.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Experience which
was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Fable is more
historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable
tells us about a million men.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Half a truth is
better than no politics.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Happy is he who
still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken
in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only
his soul but his life.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
How you think when
you lose determines how long it will be until you win.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
I believe in
getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
I do not believe
in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a
fate that falls on them unless they act.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
I owe my success
to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going
away and doing the exact opposite.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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