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

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Realism is simply Romanticism that has lost its reason...that is its reason for existing.
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Agnostic is the Greek word, for the Latin word, for ignorant
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What life and death may be to a turkey is not my business but the soul of Scrooge and the body of Cratchit are my business.
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The full potentialities of human fury cannot be reached until a friend of both parties tactfully intervenes.
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There is less difference than many suppose between the ideal Socialist system, in which the big businesses are run by the State, and the present Capitalist system, in which the State is run by the big businesses.
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I am a journalist and have no earthly motives except curiosity and personal vanity.
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Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of ideas. He is acquainted with ideas, and moves among them like a lion-tamer. Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are most dangerous is the man of no ideas. The man of no ideas will find the first idea fly to his head like wine to the head of a teetotaller.
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Life is not an illogicality yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden its wildness lies in wait.
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It is very foolish of a man to be frightened of a skeleton, for Nature has put an insurmountable obstacle against running away from it.
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To be wrong, and to be carefully wrong, that is the definition of decadence.
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When a person has found something which he prefers to life itself, he for the first time has begun to live.
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Architecture is the alphabet of giants it is the largest set of symbols ever made to meet the eyes of men. A tower stands up like a sort of simplified stature, of much more than heroic size.
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Self-denial is the test and definition of self-government.
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To be born into this earth is to be born into uncongenial surroundings, hence to be born into a romance.
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When giving treats to friends or children, give them what they like, emphatically not what is good for them.
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I despise Birth-Control first because it is ... an entirely meaningless word and is used so as to curry favour even with those who would first recoil from its real meaning. The proceeding these quack doctors recommend does not control any birth.
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Lord! what a strange world in which a man cannot remain unique even by taking the trouble to go mad!
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It is generally the man who is not ready to argue, who is ready to sneer.
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He who has no sympathy with myths has no sympathy with men.
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