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There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic ignorance.

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.
Values
Dramatic
Sense
Genuine
Certain
Ignorance
Things
Meaning
Value
Full
Dazed
Wisdom
Missed
Beauty
Poetic

More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

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At least five times, with the Arian and the Albigensian, with the Humanist skeptic, after Voltaire and after Darwin, the Christian Faith has to all appearance, gone to the dogs? But, in each of these five cases, it was the dog that died.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The professional soldier gains more and more power as the general courage of a community declines.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The most valuable book we can read, about countries we have visited, is that which recalls to us something that we did notice, but did not notice that we noticed.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The great ideals of the past failed not by being outlived (which must mean over-lived), but by not being lived enough. Mankind has not passed through the Middle Ages. Rather mankind has retreated from the Middle Ages in reaction and rout. The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Modern intelligence won't accept anything on authority. But it will accept anything without authority.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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It is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin, a creature who does not exist. It is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he didn't.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The Christian pities men because they are dying, and the Buddhist pities them because they are living. The Christian is sorry for what damages the life of a man but the Buddhist is sorry for him because he is alive.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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A stiff apology is a second insult... The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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You don't want to be so open minded that your brains fall out!
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The modern city is ugly not because it is a city but because it is not enough of a city, because it is a jungle, because it is confused and anarchic, and surging with selfish and materialistic energies.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The full potentialities of human fury cannot be reached until a friend of both parties tactfully intervenes.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The new school of art and thought does indeed wear an air of audacity, and breaks out everywhere into blasphemies, as if it required any courage to say a blasphemy. There is only one thing that it requires real courage to say, and that is a truism.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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That is the one eternal education: to be sure enough that something is true that you dare to tell it to a child.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The sort of man who admires Italian art while despising Italian religion is a tourist and a cad.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego the self is more distant than any star.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Half a truth is better than no politics.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Latter-day scepticism is fond of calling itself progressive but scepticism is really reactionary. Scepticism goes back it attempts to unsettle what has already been settled. Instead of trying to break up new fields with its plough, it simply tries to break up the plough.
Gilbert K. Chesterton