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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
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.
Aim
Literature
Words
Art
Mean
Good
Poetical
Prose
More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton
You can't have the family farm without the family.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The diseased pride [of artistic individualists] was not even conscious of a public interest, and would have found all political terms utterly tasteless and insignificant. It was no longer a question of one man one vote, but of one man one universe.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Every work of art has one indispensable mark ... the center of it is simple, however much the fulfillment may be complicated.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Do not be proud of the fact that your grandmother was shocked at something which your are accustomed to seeing or hearing without being shocked. ... It may be that your grandmother was an extremely lively and vital animal and that you are a paralytic.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The poetry of art is in beholding the single tower the poetry of nature in seeing the single tree the poetry of love in following the single woman the poetry of religion in worshipping the single star.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
America is the only nation in the world that is founded on creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
It is because artists do not practise, patrons do not patronize, crowds do not assemble to reverently worship the great work of Doing Nothing, that the world has lost its philosophy and even failed to invent a new religion.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The worst moment for an atheist is when he feels a profound sense of gratitude and has no one to thank.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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
The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth this has been exactly reversed.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Tolerance is the virtue of people who do not believe in anything.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
It's not the world that's got so much worse but the news coverage that's got so much better.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego the self is more distant than any star.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The professional soldier gains more and more power as the general courage of a community declines.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
I am a bad reporter because everything seems to me worth reporting and a bad reviewer because every sentence in every book suggests a separate essay.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
