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Man is always something worse or something better than an animal and a mere argument from animal perfection never touches him at all. Thus, in sex no animal is either chivalrous or obscene. And thus no animal invented anything so bad as drunkeness - or so good as drink.

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
Either
Invented
Animal
Thus
Anything
Argument
Better
Perfection
Something
Worse
Chivalrous
Good
Mere
Obscene
Always
Sex
Touches
Never
Drink
Timeless

More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

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The wise old fairy tales never were so silly as to say that the prince and the princess lived peacefully ever afterwards. The fairy tales said that the prince and princess lived happily ever afterwards and so they did. They lived happily, although it is very likely that from time to time they threw the furniture at each other.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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All good men are international. Nearly all bad men are cosmopolitan. If we are to be international we must be national.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Nothing is certain by uncertainty.
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It is human to err and the only final and deadly error, among all our errors, is denying that we have ever erred.
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To downgrade the human mind is bad theology.
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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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Acceptance is the truest kinship with humanity.
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Man does not live by soap alone and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.
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Vigorous organisms talk not about their processes, but about their aims.
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The moderns do not realize modernity.
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It is the chief value of legend to mix up the centuries while preserving the sentiment.
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Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.
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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.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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I am myself so exceedingly Nordic, as far as physical constitution is concerned, that I can enjoy almost any weather except what is called glorious weather. At the end of a few days, I am left wondering how the men of the Mediterranean ever managed to do almost all the most active and astonishing things that have been done.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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It has been often said, very truly, that religion is the thing that makes the ordinary man feel extraordinary it is an equally important truth that religion is the thing that makes the extraordinary man feel ordinary.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Humility is the luxurious art of reducing ourselves to a point, not to a small thing or a large one, but to a thing with no size at all, so that to it all the cosmic things are what they really are - of immeasurable stature.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true.
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Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The greatest political storm flutters only a fringe of humanity. But an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children literally alter the destiny of nations.
Gilbert K. Chesterton