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

More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

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I will not call it my philosophy for I did not make it. God and humanity made it and it made me.
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History is not a toboggan slide, but a road to be reconsidered and even retraced
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The beautification of the world is not a work of nature, but a work of art, then it involves an artist.
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London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation.
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Literature and fiction are two entirely different things. Literature is a luxury fiction is a necessity.
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The full value of this life can only be got by fighting the violent take it by storm. And if we have accepted everything we have missed something - war. This life of ours is a very enjoyable fight, but a very miserable truce.
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Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front--
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Man is not merely an evolution but rather a revolution.
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How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.
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When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.
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It is the chief value of legend to mix up the centuries while preserving the sentiment.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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But a somewhat more liberal and sympathetic examination of mankind will convince us that the cross is even older than the gibbet, that voluntary suffering was before and independent of compulsory and in short that in most important matters a man has always been free to ruin himself if he chose.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Here ends another day, during which I have had eyes, ears, hands and the great world around me. Tomorrow begins another day. Why am I allowed two?
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.
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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.
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Wait and see whether the religion of the Servile State is not in every case what I say: the encouragement of small virtues supporting capitalism, the discouragement of the huge virtues that defy it.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
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Vigorous organisms talk not about their processes, but about their aims.
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Large organization is loose organization. Nay, it would be almost as true to say that organization is always disorganization.
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The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs. It is a disease which arises from men no having sufficient power of expression to utter and get rid of the element of art in their being.
Gilbert K. Chesterton