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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.
Men
Shepherds
Rush
Complexity
Simplicity
Towards
Kings
Dream
Trying
Yearn
More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton
Just at present you only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the lamp by the light of the tree.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
To be simple is the best thing in the world.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The woman does not work because the man tells her to work and she obeys. On the contrary, the woman works because she has told the man to work and he hasn’t obeyed.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
A thing may be too sad to be believed or too wicked to be believed or too good to be believed but it cannot be too absurd to be believed in this planet of frogs and elephants, of crocodiles and cuttle-fish.
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Powerful men who have powerful passions use much of their strength in forging chains for themselves.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Science in the modern world has many uses its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice.
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Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Architecture approaches nearer than any other art to being irrevocable because it is so difficult to get rid of.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Christian Science … is the direct denial both of science and of Christianity, for Science rests wholly on the recognition of truth and Christianity on the recognition of pain.
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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.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Blasphemy is an artistic effect, because blasphemy depends upon a philosophical conviction. Blasphemy depends upon belief and is fading with it. If any one doubts this, let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Do not, I beseech you be troubled by the increase of forces already in dissolution. You have mistake the hour of the night: it is already morning.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
[Marxism will] in a generation or so [go] into the limbo of most heresies, but meanwhile it will have poisoned the Russian Revolution.
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
We are passing into a social phase in which unless a heroic effort is made for human dignity and freedom, gold will be the sole method of government and therefore the sole standard of manners.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
I tell you naught for your comfort, Yea, naught for your desire, Save that the sky grows darker yet And the sea rises higher.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
We have had no good comic operas of late, because the real world has been more comic than any possible opera.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
If Christianity should happen to be true - that is to say, if its God is the real God of the universe - then defending it may mean talking about anything and everything.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
