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Vigorous organisms talk not about their processes, but about their aims.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Gilbert K. Chesterton
Age: 62 †
Born: 1874
Born: May 29
Died: 1936
Died: June 14
Autobiographer
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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.
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Vigorous
Organisms
Processes
Aim
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Process

More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

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The Church is a house with a hundred gates: and no two men enter at exactly the same angle
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Savages and modern artists are alike strangely driven to create something uglier than themselves. but the artists find it harder.
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It is the friction of two spiritual things, of tradition and invention, or of substance and symbol, from which the mind takes fire. The creeds condemned as complex have something like the secret of sex they can breed thoughts.
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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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One pleasure attached to growing older is that many things seem to be growing younger growing fresher and more lively than we once supposed them to be.
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Self-denial is the test and definition of self-government.
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There are many ways to fall down, but there's only one way to stand up straight.
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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.
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A good joke is the closest thing we have to divine revelation.
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To desire money is much nobler than to desire success. Desiring money may mean desiring to return to your country, or marry the woman you love, or ransom your father from brigands. But desiring success must mean that you take an abstract pleasure in the unbrotherly act of distancing and disgracing other men.
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We talk of wild animals, but the wildest animal is man.
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In the modern conflict between the Smile and the Laugh, I am all in favor of laughing. The recent stage of culture and criticism might very well be summed up as the men who smile criticizing the men who laugh.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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I represent the jolly mass of mankind. I am the happy and reckless Christian.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Art is born when the temporary touches the eternal.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really this proposition: that nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover she is a step-mother.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Each generation is converted by the saint who contradicts it most.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Man is always something worse or something better than an animal and a mere argument from animal perfection never touches him at all. Thus, in sex no animal is either chivalrous or obscene. And thus no animal invented anything so bad as drunkeness - or so good as drink.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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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
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The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.
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The man of the true religious tradition understands two things: liberty and obedience. The first means knowing what you really want. The second means knowing what you really trust.
Gilbert K. Chesterton