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The greatest political storm flutters only a fringe of humanity. But an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children literally alter the destiny of nations.
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
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Greatest
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Flutters
Nations
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Political
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Storm
More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton
Anyone who is not an anarchist agrees with having a policeman at the corner of the street but the danger at present is that of finding the policeman half-way down the chimney or even under the bed.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Tolerance is the virtue of those who don't believe anything.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The whole curse of the last century has been what is called the Swing of the Pendulum that is, the idea that Man must go alternately from one extreme to the other. It is a shameful and even shocking fancy it is the denial of the whole dignity of the mankind. When Man is alive he stands still. It is only when he is dead that he swings.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
A man cannot deserve adventures he cannot earn dragons and hippogriffs.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Religious unity can look like a carnival and religious liberty can look like a funeral.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
He wondered why the pelican was the symbol of charity, except it was that it wanted a good deal of charity to admire a pelican.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
White... is not a mere absence of colour it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black... God paints in many colours but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
It is not only possible to say a great deal in praise of play it is really possible to say the highest things in praise of it. It might reasonably be maintained that the true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden heaven is a playground.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The wise old fairy tales never were so silly as to say that the prince and the princess lived peacefully ever afterwards. The fairy tales said that the prince and princess lived happily ever afterwards and so they did. They lived happily, although it is very likely that from time to time they threw the furniture at each other.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long and the age of the great epics is past.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
One can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The Sentimentalist, roughly speaking, is the man who wants to eat his cake and have it. He has no sense of honor about ideas he will not see that one must pay for an idea as well as for anything else. He will have them all at once in one wild intellectual harem, no matter how much they quarrel and contradict each other.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
You never know the best about men until you know the worst about them.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Every heresy has been an effort to narrow the Church.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Forms of expression always appear turgid to those who do not share the emotions they represent.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Democracy is reproached with saying that the majority is always right. But progress says that the minority is always right.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Americans are a very backward people, with all the real virtues of a backward people the patriarchal simplicity and human dignity of a democracy, and a respect for labor uncorrupted by cynicism.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
