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We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Gilbert K. Chesterton
Age: 62 †
Born: 1874
Born: May 29
Died: 1936
Died: June 14
Autobiographer
Biographer
Crime Writer
Essayist
Historian
Illustrator
Journalist
Literary Historian
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Philosopher
Beaconsfield
Buckinghamshire
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Gilbert Chesterton
G.K. Chesterton
G. K. C.
Morality
Mankind
Moral
Enforcing
Mean
Courtesy
Good
Morals
Always
Justified
Manners
Belong

More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

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A sober man may become a drunkard through being a coward. A brave man may become a coward through being a drunkard.
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Among the rich you will never find a really generous man even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away they are egotistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.
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The woman does not work because the man tells her to work and she obeys. On the contrary, the woman works because she has told the man to work and he hasn’t obeyed.
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Man is always something worse or something better than an animal and a mere argument from animal perfection never touches him at all. Thus, in sex no animal is either chivalrous or obscene. And thus no animal invented anything so bad as drunkeness - or so good as drink.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Every time a man knocks on a brothel door, he is really knocking for God
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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And all over the world, the old literature, the popular literature, is the same. It consists of very dignified sorrow and very undignified fun. Its sad tales are of broken hearts its happy tales are of broken heads.
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Government has become ungovernable that is, it cannot leave off governing. Law has become lawless that is, it cannot see where laws should stop. The chief feature of our time is the meekness of the mob and the madness of the government.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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We actually love ourselves more than we love joy.
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The truth is that it is our attitude towards children that is right, and our attitude towards grown-up people that is wrong.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Free verse'? You may as well call sleeping in a ditch 'free architecture'.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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People in high life are hardened to the wants and distresses of mankind as surgeons are to their bodily pains.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The supreme adventure is being BORN
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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If I think the universe is triangular, and you think it is square, there cannot be room for two universes. We may argue politely, we may argue humanely, we may argue with great mutual benefit: but, obviously, we must argue.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Most Americans ... have a sort of permanent intoxication from within, a sort of invisible champagne.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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There are two ways of getting home and one of them is to stay there.
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Modern nature-worship is all upside down. Trees and fields ought to be the ordinary things terraces and temples ought to be extraordinary. I am on the side of the man who lives in the country and wants to go to London.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Eugenics asserts that all men must be so stupid that they cannot manage their own affairs and also so clever that they can manage each other's.
Gilbert K. Chesterton