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Life Quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

49 Life quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

All Life quotes Gilbert K. Chesterton’s page

Adventure is the champagne of life, writes Chesterton, and he says that tradition keeps the past alive. He warns that taking life too seriously can trap us, while finding a passion we love makes us truly live. He also notes that humor and wonder balance seriousness.

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The true object of human life is play.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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To say that a man is an idealist is merely to say that he is a man.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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How much larger your life would be if you were smaller in it...

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Adventure is the champagne of life.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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The only object of liberty is life.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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The center of every man's existence is a dream.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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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…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Real development is not leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them, as from a root.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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When a person has found something which he prefers to life itself, he for the first time has begun to live.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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A great curse has fallen upon modern life with the discovery of the vastness of the word Education.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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What life and death may be to a turkey is not my business; but the soul of Scrooge and the body of…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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A great city is the place to escape the true drama of provincial life, and find solace in fantasy.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.

Gilbert 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.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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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…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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There is more to life than increasing its speed. Gandhi gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Some of the most frantic lies on the face of life are told with modesty and restraint; for the simple reason that…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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We are Christians and Catholics not because we worship a key, but because we have passed a door; and felt the wind…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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It is not only possible to say a great deal in praise of play; it is really possible to say the highest…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Every one on this earth should believe, amid whatever madness or moral failure, that his life and temperament have some object on…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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It might reasonably be maintained that the true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Science is the study of the admitted laws of existence, which cannot prove a universal negative about whether those laws could ever…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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It has been left to the last Christians, or rather to the first Christians fully committed to blaspheming and denying Christianity, to…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Not only is suicide a sin, it is the sin. It is the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters, "Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe," or "Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet."…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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There are two kinds of paradoxes. They are not so much the good and the bad, nor even the true and the…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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At any innocent tea-table we may easily hear a man say, "Life is not worth living." We regard it as we regard…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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It has always been one of my unclerical sermons to myself, that that remark which Peter made on seeing the vision of…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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People accuse journalism of being too personal; but to me it has always seemed far too impersonal. It is charged with tearing…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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The life of a thinking man will probably be divided into two parts -- the first in which he desires to exterminate…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Adventure is the champagne of life, but I prefer my champagne and my adventures dry.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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In real life the people who are most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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The miser is the man who starves himself and everybody else, in order to worship wealth in its dead form, as distinct…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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There must be some good in the life of battle, for so many good men have enjoyed being soldiers.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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The materialist theory of history, that all politics and ethics are the expression of economics, is a very simple fallacy indeed. It…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Every great literature has always been allegorical - allegorical of some view of the whole universe. The 'Iliad' is only great because…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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More by Gilbert K. Chesterton

The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Youth is always too serious, and just now it is too serious about frivolity.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things forbidden.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Everyone seems to assume that the unscrupulous parts of journalism will be the frivolous or jocular parts. This is against all ethical experience. Jokes…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

For Scotland has a double dose of the poison called heredity; the sense of blood in the aristocrat, the sense of doom in the…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Faith is always at a disadvantage; it is a perpetually defeated thing which survives all conquerors.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims permanence, like a dogma. People…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

The triangle of truisms, of father, mother and child, cannot be destroyed; it can only destroy those civilizations which disregard it.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Criticism is only words about words, and of what use are words about such words as these?

Gilbert K. Chesterton

What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place...The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Plato was only a Bernard Shaw who unfortunately made his jokes in Greek.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

The word good has many meanings...

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Eugenics asserts that all men must be so stupid that they cannot manage their own affairs; and also so clever that they can manage…

Gilbert K. Chesterton