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A nation is not going mad when it does extravagant things, so long as it does them in an extravagant spirit. But whenever we see things done wildly, but taken tamely, then the State is growing insane.

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.
Done
Politics
Tamely
Going
Taken
Wildly
Long
Nations
Extravagant
Things
State
Mad
Spirit
Insane
Political
Whenever
Doe
Nation
States
Growing

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The poetry of art is in beholding the single tower the poetry of nature in seeing the single tree the poetry of love in following the single woman the poetry of religion in worshipping the single star.
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Tolerance is a virtue of people who don't believe in anything anymore.
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Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.
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It is a mathematical fact that if a line be not perfectly directed towards a point, it will actually go further away from it as it comes nearer to it.
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The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.
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Human anger is a higher thing than what is called divine discontent. For you must be angry with something but you can be discontented with everything.
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Plato was right, but not quite right.
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Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all... As long as matters are really hopeful, hope is mere flattery or platitude it is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength.
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...It's natural to believe in the supernatural. It never feels natural to accept only natural things.
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Oh, most unhappy man,' he cried, 'try to be happy! You have red hair like your sister.' My red hair, like red flames, shall burn up the world,' said Gregory.
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It is the decisive people who have become civilised it is the indecisive, otherwise called the higher sceptics, or the idealistic doubters, who have remained barbarians.
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It is the root of all religion that a man knows that he is nothing in order to thank God that he is something.
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It is true that I am of an older fashion much that I love has been destroyed or sent into exile.
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The simplification of anything is always sensational.
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Grey is a colour that always seems on the eve of changing to some other colour.
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Romance is the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure.
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We have had no good comic operas of late, because the real world has been more comic than any possible opera.
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The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of something he cannot understand.
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Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.
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The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs. It is a disease which arises from men no having sufficient power of expression to utter and get rid of the element of art in their being.
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