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A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims permanence, like a dogma. People ask why we have no typical architecture of the modern world, like impressionism in painting. Surely it is obviously because we have not enough dogmas; we cannot bear to see anything in the sky that is solid and enduring, anything in the sky that does not change like the clouds of the sky.
G. K. Chesterton
Architecture
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2
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
Religion
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3
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
G. K. Chesterton
Books and Reading
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4
A large section of the intelligentsia seems wholly devoid of intelligence.
G. K. Chesterton
Intelligence and Intellectuals
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5
A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.
G. K. Chesterton
Speakers and Speaking
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6
A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.
G. K. Chesterton
Philosophers and Philosophy
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7
A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.
G. K. Chesterton
Puritans
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8
A stiff apology is a second insult. The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.
G. K. Chesterton
Apologies
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9
A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching.
G. K. Chesterton
Teachers and Teaching
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10
A turkey is more occult and awful than all the angels and archangels. In so far as God has partly revealed to us an angelic world, he has partly told us what an angel means. But God has never told us what a turkey means. And if you go and stare at a live turkey for an hour or two, you will find by the end of it that the enigma has rather increased than diminished.
G. K. Chesterton
Birds
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11
A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.
G. K. Chesterton
Intuition
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12
A yawn is a silent shout.
G. K. Chesterton
Bores and Boredom
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13
All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.
G. K. Chesterton
Architecture
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14
All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.
G. K. Chesterton
Slang
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15
Among the very rich you will never find a really generous man, even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egoistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.
G. K. Chesterton
Riches
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16
An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.
G. K. Chesterton
Adventure
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17
Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.
G. K. Chesterton
Angels
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18
Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.
G. K. Chesterton
Arts and Artists
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19
Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.
G. K. Chesterton
Arts and Artists
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20
Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.
G. K. Chesterton
Temperament
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21
Being contented ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and resigned to living in it; it ought to mean appreciating all there is in such a position.
G. K. Chesterton
Contentment
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22
Boyhood is a most complex and incomprehensible thing. Even when one has been through it, one does not understand what it was. A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been the boy.
G. K. Chesterton
Boy
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23
Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.
G. K. Chesterton
Courage
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24
Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt.
G. K. Chesterton
Buddhism
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25
But there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.
G. K. Chesterton
Life and Death
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26
But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet. Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.
G. K. Chesterton
People
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27
Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.
G. K. Chesterton
Chastity
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28
Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf ;is better than a whole loaf.
G. K. Chesterton
Compromise
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29
Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.
G. K. Chesterton
Courage
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30
Courage is getting away from death by continually coming within an inch of it.
G. K. Chesterton
Courage
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31
Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.
G. K. Chesterton
Democracy
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32
Do not free the camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.
G. K. Chesterton
Adversity
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33
Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.
G. K. Chesterton
Education
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34
Evil comes at leisure like the disease. Good comes in a hurry like the doctor.
G. K. Chesterton
Goodness and evil
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35
Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young.
G. K. Chesterton
Experience
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36
Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.
G. K. Chesterton
History and Historians
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37
Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit.
G. K. Chesterton
Reality
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38
Half a truth is better than no politics.
G. K. Chesterton
Politicians and Politics
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39
Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalized.
G. K. Chesterton
Happiness
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40
How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.
G. K. Chesterton
Thoughts and Thinking
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41
I believe in getting into hot water. I think it keeps you clean.
G. K. Chesterton
Conflict
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42
I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.
G. K. Chesterton
Action
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43
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
Advice
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44
I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.
G. K. Chesterton
Committees and Meetings
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45
If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.
G. K. Chesterton
Pride
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46
If prosperity is regarded as the reward of virtue it will be regarded as the symptom of virtue.
G. K. Chesterton
Wealth
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47
If the barricades went up in our streets and the poor became masters, I think the priests would escape, I fear the gentlemen would; but I believe the gutters would simply be running with the blood of philanthropists.
G. K. Chesterton
Philanthropists
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48
If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.
G. K. Chesterton
Understanding
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49
In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it.
G. K. Chesterton
Publishing and Publishers
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50
It is as healthy to enjoy sentiment as to enjoy jam.
G. K. Chesterton
Emotion
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51
It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.
G. K. Chesterton
Absurdity
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52
It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.
G. K. Chesterton
Problem
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53
Journalism consists largely in saying Lord James is dead to people who never knew Lord James was alive.
G. K. Chesterton
Journalism and Journalists
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54
Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers another.
G. K. Chesterton
Journalism and Journalists
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55
Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.
G. K. Chesterton
Love
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56
Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it -- or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.
G. K. Chesterton
Hygiene
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57
Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.
G. K. Chesterton
Humankind
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58
Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.
G. K. Chesterton
Virtue
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59
Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.
G. K. Chesterton
Marriage
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60
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
Men
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61
Merely having an open mind is nothing; the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.
G. K. Chesterton
Intelligence and Intellectuals
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62
Most Americans are born drunk, and really require a little wine or beer to sober them. They have a sort of permanent intoxication from within, a sort of invisible champagne. Americans do not need to drink to inspire them to do anything, though they do sometimes, I think, need a little for the deeper and more delicate purpose of teaching them how to do nothing.
G. K. Chesterton
Alcohol and Alcoholism
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63
My country wrong or right, is like saying my mother, drunk or sober.
G. K. Chesterton
Patriotism
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64
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
Patriotism
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65
New roads; new ruts.
G. K. Chesterton
Progress
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66
No man knows he is young while he is young.
G. K. Chesterton
Youth
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67
Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal man does not amaze.
G. K. Chesterton
Normality
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68
Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
G. K. Chesterton
Things and Little Things
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69
One may understand the Cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.
G. K. Chesterton
Knowledge
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70
One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time.
G. K. Chesterton
Hatred
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71
One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.
G. K. Chesterton
Adversity
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72
Our civilization has decided that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.
G. K. Chesterton
Jury
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73
People accuse journalism of being too personal; but to me it has always seemed far too impersonal. It is charged with tearing away the veils from private life; but it seems to me to be always dropping diaphanous but blinding veils between men and men. The Yellow Press is abused for exposing facts which are private; I wish the Yellow Press did anything so valuable. It is exactly the decisive individual touches that it never gives; and a proof of this is that after one has met a man a million times in the newspapers it is always a complete shock and reversal to meet him in real life.
G. K. Chesterton
Journalism and Journalists
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74
People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.
G. K. Chesterton
Argument
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75
People in high life are hardened to the wants and distresses of mankind as surgeons are to their bodily pains.
G. K. Chesterton
Understanding
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76
Psychoanalysis is confession without absolution.
G. K. Chesterton
Analysis
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77
Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.
G. K. Chesterton
Ritual
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78
Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich.
G. K. Chesterton
Science and Scientists
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79
Silence is the unbearable repartee.
G. K. Chesterton
Silence
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80
Soldiers have many faults, but they have one redeeming merit; they are never worshippers of force. Soldiers more than any other men are taught severely and systematically that might is not right. The fact is obvious. The might is in the hundred men who obey. The right (or what is held to be right) is in the one man who commands them.
G. K. Chesterton
Army and Navy
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81
Some men never feel small, but these are the few men who are.
G. K. Chesterton
Status
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82
The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.
G. K. Chesterton
Taste
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83
The artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs. Artists of a large and wholesome vitality get rid of their art easily, as they breathe easily or perspire easily. But in artists of less force, the thing becomes a pressure, and produces a definite pain, which is called the artistic temperament.
G. K. Chesterton
Arts and Artists
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84
The average man votes below himself; he votes with half a mind or a hundredth part of one. A man ought to vote with the whole of himself, as he worships or gets married. A man ought to vote with his head and heart, his soul and stomach, his eye for faces and his ear for music; also (when sufficiently provoked) with his hands and feet. If he has ever seen a fine sunset, the crimson color of it should creep into his vote. The question is not so much whether only a minority of the electorate votes. The point is that only a minority of the voter votes.
G. K. Chesterton
Voting
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85
The chief assertion of religious morality is that white is a color. Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell.
G. K. Chesterton
Virtue
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86
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.
G. K. Chesterton
Christians and Christianity
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87
The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.
G. K. Chesterton
Cosmos
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88
The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In this long vigil he often has to vary his methods of stimulation; but in this long vigil he is also himself striving against a continual tendency to sleep.
G. K. Chesterton
Arts and Artists
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89
The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid.
G. K. Chesterton
Cleverness
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90
The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.
G. K. Chesterton
Family
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91
The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.
G. K. Chesterton
Growth
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92
The full value of this life can only be got by fighting; the violent take it by storm. And if we have accepted everything we have missed something -- war. This life of ours is a very enjoyable fight, but a very miserable truce.
G. K. Chesterton
Fights and Fighting
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93
The golden age only comes to men when they have forgotten gold.
G. K. Chesterton
Gold
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94
The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life.
G. K. Chesterton
Innocence
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95
The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.
G. K. Chesterton
Poverty and The Poor
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96
The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. He is the man who has lost everything except his reason.
G. K. Chesterton
Reason
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97
The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything.
G. K. Chesterton
Terrorism
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98
The mere brute pleasure of reading --the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.
G. K. Chesterton
Books and Reading
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99
The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men.
G. K. Chesterton
Philosophers and Philosophy
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100
The Museum is not meant either for the wanderer to see by accident or for the pilgrim to see with awe. It is meant for the mere slave of a routine of self-education to stuff himself with every sort of incongruous intellectual food in one indigestible meal.
G. K. Chesterton
Museums and Galleries
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