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It is the friction of two spiritual things, of tradition and invention, or of substance and symbol, from which the mind takes fire. The creeds condemned as complex have something like the secret of sex they can breed thoughts.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Gilbert K. Chesterton
Age: 62 †
Born: 1874
Born: May 29
Died: 1936
Died: June 14
Autobiographer
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Crime Writer
Essayist
Historian
Illustrator
Journalist
Literary Historian
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Beaconsfield
Buckinghamshire
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Gilbert Chesterton
G.K. Chesterton
G. K. C.
Mind
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More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

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It is not funny that anything else should fall down only that a man should fall down... Why do we laugh? Because it is a grave religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.
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There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.
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Progress is the mother of problems.
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He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it.
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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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He walked by instinct along one white road, on which early birds hopped and sang, and found himself outside a fenced garden. There he saw the sister of Gregory, the girl with the gold-red hair, cutting lilac before breakfast, with the great unconscious gravity of a girl.
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One can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place.
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The most valuable book we can read, about countries we have visited, is that which recalls to us something that we did notice, but did not notice that we noticed.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Do not look at the faces in the illustrated papers. Look at the faces in the street.
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The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of something he cannot understand.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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To be born into this earth is to be born into uncongenial surroundings, hence to be born into a romance.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it.
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.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest. But what does he do if there is no forest? He grows a forest to hide it in.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The original quality in any man of imagination is imagery.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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(Tradition) is the democracy of the dead.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper. . . .
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Nine times out of ten it is the coarse word that condemns an evil, and the refined word that excuses it.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Most Americans are born drunk, and really require a little wine or beer to sober them.
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I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it, so I signed up for acting instead.
Gilbert K. Chesterton