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He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it.

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.
Death
Coward
Spirit
Indifference
Must
Escape
Life
Suicide
Merely
Wait
Seek
Furious
Waiting
Cling

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Man is always something worse or something better than an animal and a mere argument from animal perfection never touches him at all. Thus, in sex no animal is either chivalrous or obscene. And thus no animal invented anything so bad as drunkeness - or so good as drink.
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One can hardly think too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much of one's soul.
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A society is in decay, final or transitional, when common sense really becomes uncommon.
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The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.
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Democracy is reproached with saying that the majority is always right. But progress says that the minority is always right.
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I do not believe that any human being is fundamentally happier for being finally lost in a crowd, even if it is called a crowd of comrades.
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I represent the jolly mass of mankind. I am the happy and reckless Christian.
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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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The whole curse of the last century has been what is called the Swing of the Pendulum that is, the idea that Man must go alternately from one extreme to the other. It is a shameful and even shocking fancy it is the denial of the whole dignity of the mankind. When Man is alive he stands still. It is only when he is dead that he swings.
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The modern world seems to have no notion of preserving different things side by side, of allowing its proper and proportionate place to each, of saving the whole varied heritage of culture. It has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything.
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He is a [sane] man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head.
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The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind.
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The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.
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What is called matriarchy is simply moral anarchy, in which the mother alone remains fixed because all the fathers are fugitive and irresponsible.
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Nine times out of ten it is the coarse word that condemns an evil, and the refined word that excuses it.
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Every one on the earth should believe that he has something to give to the world which cannot otherwise be given.
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The best kind of giving is thanksgiving.
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Those thinkers who cannot believe in any gods often assert that the love of humanity would be in itself sufficient for them and so, perhaps, it would, if they had it.
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When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it.
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Nothing is so remote from us as the thing which is not old enough to be history and not new enough to be news.
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