Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 8

• And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Inspirational, Happiness, Rain

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• There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Two, Allies, Four

  "The Man Who Was Thursday". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, Ch. VIII : The Professor Explains, 1908.

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• According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in making it, He set it free. God had written, not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stage-managers, who had since made a great mess of it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Play, Perfect, Actors

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.58, Simon and Schuster

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• The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of something he cannot understand.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Secret, Helping

  "Orthodoxy". Book by G. K. Chesterton, 1908.

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• One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Stars, Knowledge, Acceptance

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.38, Simon and Schuster

  23 Copy quote

• How much larger your life would be if you were smaller in it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Christian, Christian Inspirational, Would Be

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• The supreme adventure is being born. There we do walk suddenly into a splendid and startling trap... When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world we have not made. In other words, when we step into the family we step into a fairy-tale.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Adventure, Law, Steps

  "Heretics". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, Chapter XIV: "On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family", 1905.

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• When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Mean, Office, Experts

  Illustrated London News, April 6, 1918.

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• Political Economy means that everybody except politicians must be economical.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Mean, Political, Politician

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• Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Grief, Men, Joy

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.121, Simon and Schuster

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• Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Religious, Mean, Practice

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• Atheism is too theological.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Atheism, Theological

  5 Copy quote

• Let a man walk ten miles steadily on a hot summer's day along a dusty English road, and he will soon discover why beer was invented.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Summer, Beer, Men

  54 Copy quote

• The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Lying, Artist, World

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• There is no such thing as education. The thing is merely a loose phrase for the passing on to others of whatever truth or virtue we happen to have ourselves. It is typical of our time that the more doubtful we are about the value of philosophy, the more certain we are about the value of education. That is to say, the more doubtful we are about whether we have any truth, the more certain we are (apparently) that we can teach it to our children.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Children, Philosophy, Passing On

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• In a world where everything is ridiculous, nothing can be ridiculed. You cannot unmask a mask.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  World, Ridiculous, Mask

  "The Comic Spirit of G.K. Chesterton: A Study of the Humor, Wit, and Satire in His Work". Book by Aileen Dorothy Lorberg, 1938.

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• Idolatry is when you worship what you should use, and use what you should worship.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Use, Worship, Should

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• A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Knowledge, Men, Doe

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• Why do all the clerks and navvies in the railway trains look so sad and tired, so very sad and tired? I will tell you. It is because they know that the train is going right. It is because they know that whatever place they have taken a ticket for that place they will reach. It is because after they have passed Sloane Square they know that the next station must be Victoria, and nothing but Victoria. Oh, their wild rapture! oh, their eyes like stars and their souls again in Eden, if the next station were unaccountably Baker Street!

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Stars, Taken, Tired

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.145, Simon and Schuster

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• Modern man is staggering and losing his balance because he is being pelted with little pieces of alleged fact which are native to the newspapers; and, if they turn out not to be facts, that is still more native to newspapers.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Balance, Pieces

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• Wit is a sword; it is meant to make people feel the point as well as see it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  People, Wit, Wells

  "Fool’s Talk - The Kinship of Wit and Wisdom" by Kevin Belmonte, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 24, 2015.

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• Time and again, the Faith has to all appearances gone to the dogs. But each time, it was the dog that died.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Dog, Gone, Appearance

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• You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Inspirational, Thanksgiving, Thankful

  29 Copy quote

• Men rush towards complexity, but they yearn towards simplicity. They try to be kings; but they dream of being shepherds.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Dream, Kings, Men

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• The chief object of education is not to learn things but to unlearn things.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Education, Learning, Justice

  12 Copy quote

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