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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
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.
Men
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More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

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That is the one eternal education: to be sure enough that something is true that you dare to tell it to a child.
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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.
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Just the other day in the Underground I enjoyed the pleasure of offering my seat to three ladies.
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Powerful men who have powerful passions use much of their strength in forging chains for themselves.
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The man who says, 'my country right or wrong' is like the man who says, 'my mother drunk or sober'
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The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision.
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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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The Devil's walking parody On all four-footed things.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Laughter has something in it common with the ancient words of faith and inspiration it unfreezes pride and unwinds secrecy it makes people forget themselves in the presence of something greater than themselves.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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When everyone knows that something is so, it is always more interesting and often illuminating to assumeexactly the opposite, and to see where that leads.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump you may be freeing him from being a camel.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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By all men bond to Nothing, Being slaves without a lord, By one blind idiot world obeyed, Too blind to be abhorred.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The greatest political storm flutters only a fringe of humanity. But an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children literally alter the destiny of nations.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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[Fairy tales] make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.
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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Architecture is the alphabet of giants it is the largest set of symbols ever made to meet the eyes of men. A tower stands up like a sort of simplified stature, of much more than heroic size.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The prophet and the quack are alike admired for a generation, and admired for the wrong reasons.
Gilbert K. Chesterton