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Many clever men like you have trusted to civilization. Many clever Babylonians, many clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilisation, what there is particularly immortal about yours?

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.
Like
Immortal
World
Clever
Particularly
Flagrant
Civilization
Egyptians
Tell
Civilisation
Ends
Failures
Many
Rome
Men
Trusted

More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

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It is not bigotry to be certain we are right but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.
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Nine out of ten of what we call new ideas are simply old mistakes.
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I would rather a boy learnt in the roughest school the courage to hit a politician, or gained in the hardest school the learning to refute him - rather than that he should gain in the most enlightened school the cunning to copy him.
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. . . For friendship implies individuality whereas comradeship really implies the temporary subordination, if not the temporary swamping of individuality. Friends are the better for being two but comrades are the better for being two million.
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The Darwinian movement has made no difference to mankind, except that, instead of talking unphilosophically about philosophy, they now talk unscientifically about science.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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All good writers express the state of their souls, even (as occurs in some cases of very good writers) if it is a state of damnation.
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Realism is simply Romanticism that has lost its reason...that is its reason for existing.
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The average woman is at the head of something with which she can do as she likes the average man has to obey orders and do nothing else.
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If a man only likes victory he must always come late for the battle.
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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
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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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Thoughts on the Merits of Work The worst of work nowadays is what happens to people when they cease to work.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The fact is that purification and austerity are even more necessary for the appreciation of life and laughter than for anything else. To let no bird fly past unnoticed, to spell the stones and weeds, to have the mind a storehouse of sunset, requires a discipline in pleasure and an education in gratitude.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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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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There is nothing harder to learn than painting and nothing which most people take less trouble about learning. An art school is a place where about three people work with feverish energy and everybody else idles to a degree that I should have conceived unattainable by human nature.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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A tragedy means always a mans struggle with that which is stronger than man.
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The golden age only comes to men when they have forgotten gold.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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When the chord of monotony is stretched to its tightest, it breaks with the sound of a song.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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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.
Gilbert K. Chesterton