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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.
Dream
Trying
Yearn
Men
Shepherds
Rush
Complexity
Simplicity
Towards
Kings
More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton
An almost unnatural vigilance is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old.
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
Forms of expression always appear turgid to those who do not share the emotions they represent.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Here ends another day, during which I have had eyes, ears, hands and the great world around me. Tomorrow begins another day. Why am I allowed two?
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It is generally the man who is not ready to argue, who is ready to sneer.
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Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals nay it is treachery to comrades.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The world will never starve for want of wonders but only for want of wonder.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The materialist theory of history, that all politics and ethics are the expression of economics, is a very simple fallacy indeed. It consists simply of confusing the necessary conditions of life with the normal preoccupations of life, that are quite a different thing.
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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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The professional soldier gains more and more power as the general courage of a community declines.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
I am the fool in this story, and no rebel shall hurl me from my throne.
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Wait and see whether the religion of the Servile State is not in every case what I say: the encouragement of small virtues supporting capitalism, the discouragement of the huge virtues that defy it.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
...a figure of speech can often get into a crack too small for a definition.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.
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 aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Think of all those ages through which men have had the courage to die, and then remember that we have actually fallen to talking about having the courage to live.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
A man cannot be wise enough to be a great artist without being wise enough to wish to be a philosopher.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Stick to the man who looks out of the window and tries to understand the world. Keep clear of the man who looks in at the window and tries to understand you.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Always be comic in a tragedy. What the deuce else can you do?
Gilbert K. Chesterton
