All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTONI never could see anything wrong in sensationalism; and I am sure our society is suffering more from secrecy than from flamboyant revelations.
More Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes
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These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own.
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One elephant having a trunk was odd; but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot.
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The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.
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One must somehow find a way of loving the world without trusting it; somehow one must love the world without being worldly.
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The present condition of fame is merely fashion.
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Modern toleration is really a tyranny. It is a tyranny because it is a silence.
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An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.
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Truth can understand error, but error cannot understand truth.
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A society is in decay, final or transitional, when common sense really becomes uncommon.
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People talk of the pathos and failure of plain women; but it is a more terrible thing that a beautiful woman may succeed in everything but womanhood.
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Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate.
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Tolerance is the virtue of people who do not believe in anything.
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I don’t need a church to tell me I’m wrong where I already know I’m wrong; I need a Church to tell me I’m wrong where I think I’m right
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Against a dark sky, all flowers look like fireworks.
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Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
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Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.
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There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.
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Daybreak is a never-ending glory; getting out of bed is a never ending nuisance.
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Truths turn into dogmas the minute they are disputed.
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At the back of our brains is a blaze of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life is to dig for this sunrise of wonder.
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The historic glory of America lies in the fact that it is the one nation that was founded like a church. That is, it was founded on a faith that was not merely summed up after it had exited, but was defined before it existed.
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But there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.
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Original sin is the only doctrine that’s been empirically validated by 2,000 years of human history.
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There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.
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When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.
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Eugenics asserts that all men must be so stupid that they cannot manage their own affairs; and also so clever that they can manage each other’s.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON