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G. K. Chesterton -
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A man warmly concerned with any large theories has always a relish for applying them to any triviality.
G. K. Chesterton
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It is generally the man who is not ready to argue, who is ready to sneer.
G. K. Chesterton
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A great man is not a man so strong that he feels less than other men; he is a man so strong that he feels more.
G. K. Chesterton
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Instead of the machine being a giant to which the man is the pygmy, we must at last reverse the proportions until man is a giant to whom the machine is the toy.
G. K. Chesterton
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Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul.
G. K. Chesterton
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When a woman puts up her fists to a man she is putting herself in the only posture in which he is not afraid of her.
G. K. Chesterton
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Every man who will not have softening of the heart must at last have softening of the brain
G. K. Chesterton
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We ought to be interested in that darkest and most real part of a man in which dwell not the vices that he does not display, but the virtues that he cannot.
G. K. Chesterton
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But pure wit is akin to Puritanism; to the perfect and painful consciousness of the final fact in the universe. Very briefly, the man who sees the consistency in things is a wit - and a Calvinist. The man who sees the inconsistency in things is a humorist - and a Catholic.
G. K. Chesterton
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The primary paradox of Christianity is that the ordinary condition of man is not his sane or sensible condition; that the normal itself is an abnormality.
G. K. Chesterton
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A great man knows he is not God, and the greater he is the better he knows it.
G. K. Chesterton
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A man cannot be wise enough to be a great artist without being wise enough to wish to be a philosopher.
G. K. Chesterton
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If the world becomes pagan and perishes, the last man left alive would do well to quote the Iliad and die.
G. K. Chesterton
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Thrift is the really romantic thing; economy is more romantic than extravagance... thrift is poetic because it is creative; waste is unpoetic because it is waste... if a man could undertake to make use of all the things in his dustbin, he would be a broader genius than Shakespeare.
G. K. Chesterton
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Modern nature-worship is all upside down. Trees and fields ought to be the ordinary things; terraces and temples ought to be extraordinary. I am on the side of the man who lives in the country and wants to go to London.
G. K. Chesterton
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I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible.
G. K. Chesterton
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The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman.
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It is the simple truth that man does differ from the brutes in kind and not in degree; and the proof of it is here; that it sounds like a truism to say that the most primitive man drew a picture of a monkey and that it sounds like a joke to say that the most intelligent monkey drew a picture of a man. Something of division and disproportion has appeared; and it is unique. Art is the signature of man.
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The best way that a man could test his readiness to encounter the common variety of mankind would be to climb down a chimney into any house at random, and get on as well as possible with the people inside. And that is essentially what each one of us did on the day that he was born.
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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.
G. K. Chesterton
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Humour is meant, in a literal sense, to make game of man; that is, to dethrone him from his official dignity and hunt him like game.
G. K. Chesterton
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As long as the vision of heaven is always changing, the vision of earth will be exactly the same. No ideal will remain long enough to be realized, or even partly realized. The modern young man will never change his environment; for he will always change his mind.
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If the common man in the past had a grave respect for property, it may conceivably have been because he sometimes had some of his own.
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And it is always the humble man who talks too much; the proud man watches himself too closely.
G. K. Chesterton
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Oh with what prayers and fasting Shall mortal man deserve To see that glimpse of Heaven.
G. K. Chesterton
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Quote of the day
Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
William James
G. K. Chesterton
Creative Commons
Born:
May 29, 1874
Died:
June 14, 1936
(aged 62)
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