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A detective story generally describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. A modern philosophic story generally describes six dead men discussing how any man can possibly be alive.

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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Philosopher
Beaconsfield
Buckinghamshire
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Gilbert Chesterton
G.K. Chesterton
G. K. C.
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More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

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A modern vegetarian is also a teetotaler, yet there is no obvious connection between consuming vegetables and not consuming fermented vegetables. A drunkard, when lifted laboriously out of the gutter, might well be heard huskily to plead that he had fallen there through excessive devotion to a vegetable diet.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of ideas. He is acquainted with ideas, and moves among them like a lion-tamer. Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are most dangerous is the man of no ideas. The man of no ideas will find the first idea fly to his head like wine to the head of a teetotaller.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Nine out of ten of what we call new ideas are simply old mistakes.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Every remedy is a desperate remedy. Every cure is a miraculous cure. Curing a madman is not arguing with a philosopher it is casting out a devil.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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We fear men so much, because we fear God so little. One fear cures another. When man's terror scares you, turn your thoughts to the wrath of God.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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I am not absentminded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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It has always been one of my unclerical sermons to myself, that that remark which Peter made on seeing the vision of a single hour, ought to be made by us all, in contemplating every panoramic change in the long Vision we call life... It is good for us to be here - it is good for us to be here, repeating itself eternally.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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All we know of the Missing Link is that he is missing - and he won't be missed either.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Though I believe in liberalism, I find it difficult to believe in liberals.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Nothing is certain by uncertainty.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The home is not the one tame place in the world of adventure. It is the one wild place in the world of rules and set tasks.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Political Economy means that everybody except politicians must be economical.
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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A nation is not going mad when it does extravagant things, so long as it does them in an extravagant spirit. But whenever we see things done wildly, but taken tamely, then the State is growing insane.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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And it is always the humble man who talks too much the proud man watches himself too closely.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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It is only great men who take up a great space by not being there.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The only people who seem to have nothing to do with the education of the children are the parents.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Obviously if any actions, even a lunatic's, can be causeless, determinism is done for. If the chain of causation can be broken for a madman, it can be broken for a man.
Gilbert K. Chesterton