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Gilbert Keith Chesterton Quotes
English author & mystery novelist
 | Quotes by Gilbert Keith Chesterton |
| “ | But a somewhat more liberal and sympathetic examination of mankind will convince us that the cross is even older than the gibbet, that voluntary suffering was before and independent of compulsory; and in short that in most important matters a man has always been free to ruin himself if he chose.
What's Wrong With the World; p. 118 | ” |
| “ | He may be mad, but there's method in his madness. There nearly always is method in madness. It's what drives men mad, being methodical.
The Fad of the Fisherman (1922) | ” |
| “ | It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.
Scandal of Father Brown (1935) | ” |
| “ | The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.
Orthodoxy; p. 14 | ” |
| “ | 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 the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.
Orthodoxy | ” |
| “ | The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.
Orthodoxy | ” |
| “ | There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.
Heretics (1905) | ” |
| “ | The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.
Flying Inn (1914) | ” |
| “ | Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
Defendant (1901) | ” |
| “ | All slang is a metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.
Defendant (1901) | ” |
| “ | There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob.
"Heretics", 1905 | ” |
| “ | You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it. | ” |
| “ | To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it. | ” |
| “ | There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.
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| “ | The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.
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| “ | The people who are the most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all. | ” |
| “ | The most astonishing thing about miracles is that they happen. | ” |
| “ | The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people. | ” |
| “ | Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
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| “ | Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.
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| “ | Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper. | ” |
| “ | Journalism largely consists of saying 'Lord Jones is Dead' to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.
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| “ | It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong. | ” |
| “ | If there were no God, there would be no Atheists.
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| “ | I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it.
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| “ | I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
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| “ | I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean. | ” |
| “ | Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions. | ” |
| “ | Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up. | ” |
| “ | By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece. | ” |
| “ | Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.
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| “ | An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered. | ” |
| “ | A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
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| “ | "My country, right or wrong," is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, "My mother, drunk or sober."
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