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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.
Art
Mean
Good
Poetical
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Literature
Words

More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Comradeship is obvious and universal and open but it is only one kind of affection it has characteristics that would destroy any other kind. Anyone who has known true comradeship in a club or in a regiment, knows that it is impersonal.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The test of happiness is gratitude.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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There are two ways of getting home and one of them is to stay there.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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There's a lot of difference between listening and hearing.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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It is always the secure who are humble.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The Sentimentalist, roughly speaking, is the man who wants to eat his cake and have it. He has no sense of honor about ideas he will not see that one must pay for an idea as well as for anything else. He will have them all at once in one wild intellectual harem, no matter how much they quarrel and contradict each other.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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There is a case for telling the truth there is a case for avoiding the scandal but there is no possible defense for the man who tells the scandal, but does not tell the truth
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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A good civilisation spreads over us freely like a tree, varying and yielding because it is alive. A bad civilisation stands up and sticks out above us like an umbrella-artificial, mathematical in shape not merely universal, but uniform.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. Never forget that the devil fell by force of gravity. He who has the faith has the fun.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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When you with velvets mantled o'er, Defy December's tempests frore, Oh! spare one garment from your store, To clothe the poor at Christmas.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Every one of the great revolutionists, from Isaiah to Shelley, have been optimists. They have been indignant, not about the badness of existence, but about the slowness of men in realizing its goodness.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more.
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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If I think the universe is triangular, and you think it is square, there cannot be room for two universes. We may argue politely, we may argue humanely, we may argue with great mutual benefit: but, obviously, we must argue.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long as you have one good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Soldiers have many faults, but they have one redeeming merit they are never worshippers of force. Soldiers more than any other men are taught severely and systematically that might is not right. The fact is obvious. The might is in the hundred men who obey. The right (or what is held to be right) is in the one man who commands them.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The first two facts which a healthy boy or girl feels about sex are these: first that it is beautiful and then that it is dangerous.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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It is the friction of two spiritual things, of tradition and invention, or of substance and symbol, from which the mind takes fire. The creeds condemned as complex have something like the secret of sex they can breed thoughts.
Gilbert K. Chesterton