Death Quotes by G.K. Chesterton

14 Death quotes by G.K. Chesterton

G.K. Chesterton’s fourteen reflections on death sparkle with his characteristic humor and paradox. Even with a modest collection, his clever phrasing turns the somber subject into a lively, thought‑provoking dialogue.

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“We now have a strong desire for living combined with a strange carelessness about dying. We desire life like water and yet…

G.K. Chesterton

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“It has been proved a hundred times over that if you really wish to enrage people and make them angry, even unto…

G.K. Chesterton

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“Perhaps we are both doing what we think right. But what we think right is so damned different that there can be…

G.K. Chesterton

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“Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung; The world was very old indeed when you and I…

G.K. Chesterton

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“This very pride in keeping his word was that he was keeping it to miscreants. It was his last triumph over these…

G.K. Chesterton

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“Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to…

G.K. Chesterton

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“We think the cat superior because we have (or most of us have) a particular philosophy to the effect that life is…

G.K. Chesterton

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“The Skeleton Chattering finch and water-fly Are not merrier than I; Here among the flowers I lie Laughing everlastingly. No: I may…

G.K. Chesterton

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“Now for St. Francis nothing was ever in the background. We might say that his mind had no background, except perhaps that…

G.K. Chesterton

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“A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice. He can only…

G.K. Chesterton

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“A Second Childhood.” When all my days are ending And I have no song to sing, I think that I shall not…

G.K. Chesterton

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“If I beat my grandmother to death to-morrow in the middle of Battersea Park, you may be perfectly certain that people will…

G.K. Chesterton

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“Take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages.…

G.K. Chesterton

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“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

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More by G.K. Chesterton

“I never use paradox. The statements I make are wearisome and obvious common sense. I have even been driven to the tedium of reading…

G.K. Chesterton

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“Nothing, again, could be more prosaic and impenetrable than the domestic energies of Miss Diana Duke. But Innocent had somehow blundered on the discovery…

G.K. Chesterton

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“The mass of men have been forced to be gay about the little things, but sad about the big ones. Nevertheless (I offer my…

G.K. Chesterton

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“ask yourself how many people you have met who grumbled at a thing as incurable, and how many who attacked it as curable? How…

G.K. Chesterton

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“The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do…

G.K. Chesterton

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“Internationalism is in any case hostile to democracy….The only purely popular government is local, and founded on local knowledge. The citizens can rule the…

G.K. Chesterton

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“There was a short railway official travelling up to the terminus, three fairly short market-gardeners picked up two stations afterwards, one very short widow…

G.K. Chesterton

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“Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.”

G.K. Chesterton

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“Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.”

G.K. Chesterton

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“There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected…

G.K. Chesterton

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“Man, by a blind instinct, knew that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first. The authority of priests to absolve,…

G.K. Chesterton

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“It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act…

G.K. Chesterton

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“But in order that life should be a story or romance to us, it is necessary that a great part of it, at any…

G.K. Chesterton

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“Buddhism seeks after God with the largest conception it can find, the all-producing and all-absorbing One; Christianity seeks after God with the most elementary…

G.K. Chesterton

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“Man is more himself, more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing and grief superficial.”

G.K. Chesterton

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