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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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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.
Good
Food
Bless
Things
Suffering
Begins
Pessimism
Lying
Refuse
Weary
Society
Despair
Blessings
Evil
Blessing
Decline
Doe
Tired
Cure
Reason
Longer
Feed
Work
Joy
Cures

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In the modern conflict between the Smile and the Laugh, I am all in favor of laughing. The recent stage of culture and criticism might very well be summed up as the men who smile criticizing the men who laugh.
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The ignorant pronounce it Frood To cavil or applaud The well-informed pronounce it Froyd But I pronounce it Fraud.
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Acceptance is the truest kinship with humanity.
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St Thomas (Aqinas) loved books and lived on books... When asked for what he thanked God most, he answered simply, ‘I have understood every page I ever read’.
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There is no obligation on us to be richer, or busier, or more efficient, or more productive, or more progressive, or any way worldlier or wealthier, if it does not make us happier.
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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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A man looking at a hippopotamus may sometimes be tempted to regard a hippopotamus as an enormous mistake but he is also bound to confess that a fortunate inferiority prevents him personally from making such mistakes.
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Evil comes at leisure like the disease. Good comes in a hurry like the doctor.
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All but the hard hearted man must be torn with pity for this pathetic dilemma of the rich man, who has to keep the poor man just stout enough to do the work and just thin enough to have to do it.
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Leisure is being allowed to do nothing.
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[Marxism will] in a generation or so [go] into the limbo of most heresies, but meanwhile it will have poisoned the Russian Revolution.
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In real life the people who are most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all.
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You don't want to be so open minded that your brains fall out!
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All good men are international. Nearly all bad men are cosmopolitan. If we are to be international we must be national.
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Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought.
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The reason that angels fly is that they take themselves so lightly.
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