To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
G. K. CHESTERTONTradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.
More G. K. Chesterton Quotes
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The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen.
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The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.
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Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.
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One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.
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Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.
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For when we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything.
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If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God.
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You’ll never find the solution if you don’t see the problem.
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The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.
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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.
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Whenever you remove any fence, always pause long enough to ask why it was put there in the first place.
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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 that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.
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The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.
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Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.
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God is not a symbol of goodness; goodness is a symbol of God.
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We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press… It is not we who silence the press. It is the press who silences us.
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And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.
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Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.
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Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
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We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbour.
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We fear men so much, because we fear God so little. One fear cures another. When man’s terror scares you, turn your thoughts to the wrath of God.
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Passion makes every detail important.
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Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful.
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The State did not own men so entirely, even when it could send them to the stake, as it sometimes does now where it can send them to the elementary school.
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Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.
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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