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Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Gilbert K. Chesterton
Age: 62 †
Born: 1874
Born: May 29
Died: 1936
Died: June 14
Autobiographer
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Beaconsfield
Buckinghamshire
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Gilbert Chesterton
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Perfect
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More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion.
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And pray where in earth or heaven are there prudent marriages-Might as well talk about prudent suicides.
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We are talking about an artist and for the enjoyment of the artist the mask must be to some extent moulded on the face. What he makes outside him must correspond to something inside him he can only make his effects out of some of the materials of his soul.
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I think the oddest thing about the advanced people is that, while they are always talking about things as problems, they have hardly any notion of what a real problem is.
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It is the beginning of all true criticism of our time to realize that it has really nothing to say, at the very moment when it has invented so tremendous a trumpet for saying it.
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Science boasts of the distance of its stars of the terrific remoteness of the things of which it has to speak. But poetry and religion always insist upon the proximity, the almost menacing closeness of the things with which they are concerned. Always the Kingdom of Heaven is At Hand.
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By experts in poverty I do not mean sociologists, but poor men.
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The test of happiness is gratitude.
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The artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs. Artists of a large and wholesome vitality get rid of their art easily, as they breathe easily or perspire easily. But in artists of less force, the thing becomes a pressure, and produces a definite pain, which is called the artistic temperament.
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Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
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Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?
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Stick to the man who looks out of the window and tries to understand the world. Keep clear of the man who looks in at the window and tries to understand you.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad.
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The past is democratic, because it is a people. The future is despotic, because it is a caprice. Every man is alone in his prediction, just as each man is alone in a dream.
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Moral issues are always terribly complex for someone without principles.
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The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade other people how good they are.
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When people begin to ignore human dignity, it will not be long before they begin to ignore human rights.
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English experience indicates that when the two great political parties agree about something it is generally wrong.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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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.
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People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.
Gilbert K. Chesterton