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G. K. Chesterton

conservative English writer of the Roman Catholic persuasion; in addition to volumes of criticism and polemics he wrote detective novels featuring Father Brown (1874-1936)

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A dead thing goes with the stream. Only a living thing can go against it.

– G. K. Chesterton

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Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.

– G. K. Chesterton

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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.

– G. K. Chesterton

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Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult, and not tried.

– G. K. Chesterton

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Half a truth is better than no politics.

– G. K. Chesterton

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I believe in getting into hot water it keeps you clean.

– G. K. Chesterton

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If there were no God, there would be no Atheists.

– G. K. Chesterton

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Journalism largely consists of saying 'Lord Jones is Dead' to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.

– G. K. Chesterton

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Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

– G. K. Chesterton

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The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.

– G. K. Chesterton

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There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob.

– G. K. Chesterton

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Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.

– G. K. Chesterton

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The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.

– G. K. Chesterton

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You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution

– G. K. Chesterton

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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.

– G. K. Chesterton

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It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.

– G. K. Chesterton

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A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon.

– G. K. Chesterton

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A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

– G. K. Chesterton

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A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.

– G. K. Chesterton

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All slang is a metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

– G. K. Chesterton

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An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.

– G. K. Chesterton

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Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.

– G. K. Chesterton

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Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.

– G. K. Chesterton

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Brave men are all vertebrates they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.

– G. K. Chesterton

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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.

– G. K. Chesterton

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Fairy Tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed.

– G. K. Chesterton

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Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.

– G. K. Chesterton

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I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.

– G. K. Chesterton

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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.

– G. K. Chesterton

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I still believe in liberalism today as much as I ever did, but, oh, there was a happy time when I believed in liberals...

– G. K. Chesterton

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If a rhinoceros were to enter this resteraunt now, there is no denying he would have great power here. But I would be the first to rise and assure him that he had no authority whatever.

– G. K. Chesterton

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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.

– G. K. Chesterton

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Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.

– G. K. Chesterton

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Literature is a luxury fiction is a necessity.

– G. K. Chesterton

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Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.

– G. K. Chesterton

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Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.

– G. K. Chesterton

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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.

– G. K. Chesterton

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One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time.

– G. K. Chesterton

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People in high life are hardened to the wants and distresses of mankind as surgeons are to their bodily pains.

– G. K. Chesterton

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The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies probably because they are generally the same people.

– G. K. Chesterton

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The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.

– G. K. Chesterton

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The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered is to miss the train before.

– G. K. Chesterton

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The poor complain that they are governed badly. The rich complain that they are governed at all.

– G. K. Chesterton

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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.

– G. K. Chesterton

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There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.

– G. K. Chesterton

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Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

– G. K. Chesterton

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To be clever enough to get all the money, one must be stupid enough to want it.

– G. K. Chesterton

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To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.

– G. K. Chesterton

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Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it.

– G. K. Chesterton

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Virtue is not the absense of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers virtue is a vivid and separate ting, like pain or a particular smell.

– G. K. Chesterton

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When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.

– G. K. Chesterton

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