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The only words that ever satisfied me as describing nature are the terms used in fairy books, charm, spell, enchantment they express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery.
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
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Beaconsfield
Buckinghamshire
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Gilbert Chesterton
G.K. Chesterton
G. K. C.
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More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton
A man looking at a hippopotamus may sometimes be tempted to regard a hippopotamus as an enormous mistake but he is also bound to confess that a fortunate inferiority prevents him personally from making such mistakes.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
One can no more have a private religion than one can have a private sun or a private moon.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
We fear men so much, because we fear God so little. One fear cures another. When man's terror scares you, turn your thoughts to the wrath of God.
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
Americans are a very backward people, with all the real virtues of a backward people the patriarchal simplicity and human dignity of a democracy, and a respect for labor uncorrupted by cynicism.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Every remedy is a desperate remedy. Every cure is a miraculous cure. Curing a madman is not arguing with a philosopher it is casting out a devil.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
History is not a toboggan slide, but a road to be reconsidered and even retraced
Gilbert K. Chesterton
I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
In the struggle for existence, it is only on those who hang on for ten minutes after all is hopeless, that hope begins to dawn.
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
I will not call it my philosophy for I did not make it. God and humanity made it and it made me.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really this proposition: that nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover she is a step-mother.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags.
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
I think the oddest thing about the advanced people is that, while they are always talking about things as problems, they have hardly any notion of what a real problem is.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Laughter has something in it common with the ancient words of faith and inspiration it unfreezes pride and unwinds secrecy it makes people forget themselves in the presence of something greater than themselves.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic ignorance.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The man of the true religious tradition understands two things: liberty and obedience. The first means knowing what you really want. The second means knowing what you really trust.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
A detective story generally describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. A modern philosophic story generally describes six dead men discussing how any man can possibly be alive.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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