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The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

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And it did for one wild moment cross my mind that, perhaps, those might not be the very best judges of the relation of religion to happiness who, by their own account, had neither one nor the other.
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All that we call spirit and art and ecstacy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forgot.
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Earnest Freethinkers need not worry themselves so much about the persecutions of the past. Before the Liberal idea is dead or triumphant we shall see wars and persecutions the like of which the world has never seen.
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Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.
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No sceptical philosopher can ask any questions that may not equally be asked by a tired child on a hot afternoon.
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What the world wants, what the world is waiting for, is not Modern Poetry or Classical Poetry or Neo-Classical Poetry - but Good Poetry. And the dreadful disreputable doubt, which stirs in my own skeptical mind, is doubt about whether it would really matter much what style a poet chose to write in, in any period, as long as he wrote Good poetry.
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It has been often said, very truly, that religion is the thing that makes the ordinary man feel extraordinary it is an equally important truth that religion is the thing that makes the extraordinary man feel ordinary.
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Pessimism is not in being tired of evil but in being tired of good. Despair does not lie in being weary of suffering, but in being weary of joy. It is when for some reason or other good things in a society no longer work that the society begins to decline when its food does not feed, when its cures do not cure, when its blessings refuse to bless.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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There is only one thing that stands in our midst, attenuated and threatened, but enthroned in some power like a ghost of the Middle Ages: the Trade Unions.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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It is the mark of our whole modern history that the masses are kept quiet with a fight. They are kept quiet by the fight because it is a sham-fight thus most of us know by this time that the Party System has been popular only in the sense that a football match is popular.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Students of popular science... are always insisting that Christianity and Buddhism are very much alike, especially Buddhism. This is generally believed, and I believed it myself until I read a book giving the reasons for it.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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No man knows he is young while he is young.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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There is less difference than many suppose between the ideal Socialist system, in which the big businesses are run by the State, and the present Capitalist system, in which the State is run by the big businesses.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Art is born when the temporary touches the eternal.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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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.
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Feminists are those who cannot stand female characteristics.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The objection to fairy stories is that they tell children there are dragons. But children have always known there are dragons. Fairy stories tell children that dragons can be killed.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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'My country, right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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I have myself a poetical enthusiasm for pigs, and the paradise of my fancy is one where pigs have wings. But it is only men, especially wise men, who discuss whether pigs can fly we have no particular proof that pigs ever discuss it.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Tea, although an OrientalIs a gentleman at leastCocoa is a cad and coward,Cocoa is a vulgar beast.
Gilbert K. Chesterton