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The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say.

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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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.
Mean
Good
Poetical
Prose
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Literature
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More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

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(Tradition) is the democracy of the dead.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.
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The books that influence the world are those that it has not read.
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Islam was something like a Christian heresy. The early heresies had been full of mad reversals and evasions of the Incarnation, rescuing their Jesus from the reality of his body even at the expense of the sincerity of his soul.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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I still believe in liberalism today as much as I ever did, but, oh, there was a happy time when I believed in liberals.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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There have been household gods and household saints and household fairies. I am not sure that there have yet been any factory gods or factory saints or factory fairies. I may be wrong, as I am no commericial expert, but I have not heard of them as yet.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The Catholic Church is the only thing that saves man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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If you happen to read fairy tales, you will observe that one idea runs from one end of them to the other--the idea that peace and happiness can only exist on some condition. This idea, which is the core of ethics, is the core of the nursery-tales.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden heaven is a playground.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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We cannot fling ourselves into the blank future we can only call up images from the past. This being so, the important principle follows, that how many images we have largely depends on how much past we have.
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 more truly we can see life as a fairytale, the more clearly the tale resolves itself into war with the dragon who is wasting fairyland.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Comradeship is quite a different thing from friendship. . .
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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In the end it will not matter to us whether we wrote well or ill whether we fought with flails or reeds. It will matter to us greatly on what side we fought.
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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Forms of expression always appear turgid to those who do not share the emotions they represent.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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If a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity for the world denied Christ's.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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We are talking about an artist and for the enjoyment of the artist the mask must be to some extent moulded on the face. What he makes outside him must correspond to something inside him he can only make his effects out of some of the materials of his soul.
Gilbert K. Chesterton