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It is the decisive people who have become civilised it is the indecisive, otherwise called the higher sceptics, or the idealistic doubters, who have remained barbarians.
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
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Philosopher
Beaconsfield
Buckinghamshire
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Gilbert Chesterton
G.K. Chesterton
G. K. C.
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People
Barbarians
Decisive
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Sceptics
Remained
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Otherwise
Sceptic
Higher
Doubters
More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton
He walked by instinct along one white road, on which early birds hopped and sang, and found himself outside a fenced garden. There he saw the sister of Gregory, the girl with the gold-red hair, cutting lilac before breakfast, with the great unconscious gravity of a girl.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
A nation is not going mad when it does extravagant things, so long as it does them in an extravagant spirit. But whenever we see things done wildly, but taken tamely, then the State is growing insane.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
There are arguments for atheism, and they do not depend, and never did depend, upon science. They are arguable enough, as far as they go, upon a general survey of life only it happens to be a superficial survey of life.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest. But what does he do if there is no forest? He grows a forest to hide it in.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
A crown of roses is also a crown of thorns.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The Catholic Church is the only thing that saves man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Among the rich you will never find a really generous man even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away they are egotistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Any one of the strange laws we suffer is a compromise between a fad and a vested interest.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
We are always giving foreign names to very native things. If there is a thing that reeks of the glorious tradition of the old English tavern, it is toasted cheese. But for some wild reason we call it Welsh rarebit. I believe that what we call Irish stew might more properly be called English stew, and that it is not particularly familiar in Ireland.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals nay it is treachery to comrades.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Is there anyone... who will maintain that the Party System could have been created by people particularly fond of truth?
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Even in an empire of atheists the dead man is always sacred.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the right way up satisfies it supremely in this, that by its creed Joy becomes something gigantic, and Sadness something special and small.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
It is quite an old-fashioned fallacy to suppose that our objection to scepticism is that it removes the discipline from life. Our objection to scepticism is that it removes the motive power. Materialism is not a thing which destroys mere restraint. Materialism itself is the great restraint.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
We talk of wild animals, but the wildest animal is man.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Where does a wise man kick a pebble? On the beach. Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Just at present you only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the lamp by the light of the tree.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The Christian pities men because they are dying, and the Buddhist pities them because they are living. The Christian is sorry for what damages the life of a man but the Buddhist is sorry for him because he is alive.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
If we want to give poor people soap we must set out deliberately to give them luxuries. If we will not make them rich enough to be clean, then empathically we must do what we did with the saints. We must reverence them for being dirty.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
