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A good civilisation spreads over us freely like a tree, varying and yielding because it is alive. A bad civilisation stands up and sticks out above us like an umbrella-artificial, mathematical in shape not merely universal, but uniform.

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.
Shapes
Freely
Universal
Artificial
Yielding
Civilization
Mathematical
Varying
Tree
Stands
Spreads
Alive
Sticks
Umbrella
Good
Shape
Civilisation
Like
Spread
Uniform
Merely
Uniforms

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A radical generally meant a man who thought he could somehow pull up the root without affecting the flower. A conservative generally meant a man who wanted to conserve everything except his own reason for conserving anything.
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There cannot be a nation of millionaires, and there never has been a nation of Utopian comrades but there have been any number of nations of tolerably contented peasants.
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Family is the theatre of the spiritual drama, the place where things happen, especially the things that matter.
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Modern intelligence won't accept anything on authority. But it will accept anything without authority.
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The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present.
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A good joke is the closest thing we have to divine revelation.
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Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.
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Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.
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Women are the only realists their whole object in life is to pit their realism against the extravagant, excessive, and occasionally drunken idealism of men.
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All government is an ugly necessity.
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The strangest whim has seized me ... After all I think I will not hang myself today.
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We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent. We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre's castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return to at evening.
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Every one on the earth should believe that he has something to give to the world which cannot otherwise be given.
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The books that influence the world are those that it has not read.
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Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils by making men afraid of war or alcohol, or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice.
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The sort of man who admires Italian art while despising Italian religion is a tourist and a cad.
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My brain and this world don't fit each other and there's an end of it.
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The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.
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Literature and fiction are two entirely different things. Literature is a luxury fiction is a necessity.
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It has always been one of my unclerical sermons to myself, that that remark which Peter made on seeing the vision of a single hour, ought to be made by us all, in contemplating every panoramic change in the long Vision we call life... It is good for us to be here - it is good for us to be here, repeating itself eternally.
Gilbert K. Chesterton