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The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.

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.
Soul
Eating
Timeless
Might
Certainly
Ruin
Men
Fool
Ruins
Liberty
Damage
Either
Possibly
Free
Damn
Owns
Doe
Drinking
Damned
May
Dog
Gambling

More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Always be comic in a tragedy. What the deuce else can you do?
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At any innocent tea-table we may easily hear a man say, Life is not worth living. We regard it as we regard the statement that it is a fine day nobody thinks that it can possibly have any serious effect on the man or on the world. And yet if that utterance were really believed, the world would stand on its head.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.
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The atheist is not interested in anything except attacks on atheism.
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We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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What the world wants, what the world is waiting for, is not Modern Poetry or Classical Poetry or Neo-Classical Poetry - but Good Poetry. And the dreadful disreputable doubt, which stirs in my own skeptical mind, is doubt about whether it would really matter much what style a poet chose to write in, in any period, as long as he wrote Good poetry.
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Savages and modern artists are alike strangely driven to create something uglier than themselves. but the artists find it harder.
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Men spoke much in my boyhood about restricted or ruined men of genius: and it was common to say that many a man was a Great Might-Have-Been. To me it's a more solid and startling fact that any man in the street is a Great Might-Not-Have-Been.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Religious unity can look like a carnival and religious liberty can look like a funeral.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Science boasts of the distance of its stars of the terrific remoteness of the things of which it has to speak. But poetry and religion always insist upon the proximity, the almost menacing closeness of the things with which they are concerned. Always the Kingdom of Heaven is At Hand.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Instead of the machine being a giant to which the man is the pygmy, we must at last reverse the proportions until man is a giant to whom the machine is the toy.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Half a truth is better than no politics.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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There is also an insulting speech about 'one grey day just like another'. You might as well talk about one green tree like another.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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All architecture is great architecture after sunset perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Dear Sir: Regarding your article 'What's Wrong with the World?' I am. Yours truly.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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We have not made cricket and football [soccer] professional because of any astonishing avarice or new vulgarity. We have made them professional because we would have them perfect. We have dedicated men to them as to some god of inhuman excellence. We care more for football than for the fun of playing football.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Tea, although an OrientalIs a gentleman at leastCocoa is a cad and coward,Cocoa is a vulgar beast.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Just the other day in the Underground I enjoyed the pleasure of offering my seat to three ladies.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The big corporation is not in the least remarkable for efficiency it is only too big to be blamed for its inefficiency.
Gilbert K. Chesterton