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Men rush towards complexity, but they yearn towards simplicity. They try to be kings but they dream of being shepherds.
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.
Towards
Kings
Dream
Trying
Yearn
Men
Shepherds
Rush
Complexity
Simplicity
More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton
Aristocracy: government by the badly educated.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Though the academic authorities are actually proud of conducting everything by means of Examinations, they seldom indulge in what religious people used to descibe as Self-Examination. The consequence is that the modern State has educated its citizens in a series of ephemeral fads.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Women have a thirst for order and beauty as for something physical there is a strange female power of hating ugliness and waste as good men can only hate sin and bad men virtue.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
...a figure of speech can often get into a crack too small for a definition.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
We talk of wild animals, but the wildest animal is man.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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
Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all... As long as matters are really hopeful, hope is mere flattery or platitude it is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
At any innocent tea-table we may easily hear a man say, Life is not worth living. We regard it as we regard the statement that it is a fine day nobody thinks that it can possibly have any serious effect on the man or on the world. And yet if that utterance were really believed, the world would stand on its head.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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
The great misfortune of the modern English is not at all that they are more boastful than other people (they are not) it is that they are boastful about those particular things which nobody can boast of without losing them.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
One of the chief uses of religion is that it makes us remember our coming from darkness, the simple fact that we are created.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
In anything that does cover the whole of your life - in your philosophy and your religion - you must have mirth. If you do not have mirth you will certainly have madness.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The objection to fairy stories is that they tell children there are dragons. But children have always known there are dragons. Fairy stories tell children that dragons can be killed.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
I have argued with him on almost every subject in the world, and we have always been on opposite sides, without affectation or animosity... It is necessary to disagree with him as much as I do, in order to admire him as I do and I am proud of him as a foe even more than as a friend.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Every man is important if he loses his lifeand every man is funny if he loses his hat and has to run after it.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men reform a thing by removing the reality from it, and then do not know what to do with the unreality that is left.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven't got any.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
No man can be merry unless he is serious.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
No sceptical philosopher can ask any questions that may not equally be asked by a tired child on a hot afternoon.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men spoke much in my boyhood about restricted or ruined men of genius: and it was common to say that many a man was a Great Might-Have-Been. To me it's a more solid and startling fact that any man in the street is a Great Might-Not-Have-Been.
Gilbert K. Chesterton