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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.
Full
Dazed
Wisdom
Missed
Beauty
Poetic
Values
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Things
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Value
More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton
Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The past is democratic, because it is a people. The future is despotic, because it is a caprice. Every man is alone in his prediction, just as each man is alone in a dream.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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
Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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
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
He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Humility is the luxurious art of reducing ourselves to a point, not to a small thing or a large one, but to a thing with no size at all, so that to it all the cosmic things are what they really are - of immeasurable stature.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Thanks are the highest form of thought.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
There are a great many good people, and a great many sane people here this afternoon. Unfortunately, by a kind of coincidence, all the good people are mad, and all the sane people are wicked.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
A good joke is the closest thing we have to divine revelation.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Nothing is so remote from us as the thing which is not old enough to be history and not new enough to be news.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Not only is suicide a sin, it is the sin. It is the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an interest in existence the refusal to take the oath of loyalty to life. The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men. As far as he is concerned he wipes out the world.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press... It is not we who silence the press. It is the press who silences us.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
There is no obligation on us to be richer, or busier, or more efficient, or more productive, or more progressive, or any way worldlier or wealthier, if it does not make us happier.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
One can hardly think too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much of one's soul.
Gilbert K. Chesterton