Nature Quote by G.K. Chesterton

““A joke is by its nature a protest against sense. It is no good attacking nonsense for being successfully nonsensical.””

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 that her thrifty dressmaking went with a considerable feminine care for dress--the one feminine thing that had never failed her solitary self-respect. In consequence Smith pestered her with a theory (which he really seemed to take…

G.K. Chesterton

“The mass of men have been forced to be gay about the little things, but sad about the big ones. Nevertheless (I offer my last dogma defiantly) it is not native to man to be so. Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an…

G.K. Chesterton

“ask yourself how many people you have met who grumbled at a thing as incurable, and how many who attacked it as curable? How many people we have heard abuse the British elementary schools, as they would abuse the British climate? How few have we met who realized that British education can be altered, but British weather cannot?...For a thousand…

G.K. Chesterton

“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 it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games to which it is most attached is called "Keep to-morrow dark," and which is also named…

G.K. Chesterton

“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 city because they know the city; but it will always be an exceptional sort of citizen who has or claims the right to rule over ten cities, and these remote and altogether alien cities…To make all…

G.K. Chesterton

“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 lady going up from a small Essex town, and a very short Roman Catholic priest going up from a small Essex village. When it came to the last case, Valentin gave it up and almost laughed.…

G.K. Chesterton

“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 across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer…

G.K. Chesterton

“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 of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, "Why should ANYTHING go right; even observation…

G.K. Chesterton

Explore all 853 G.K. Chesterton quotes

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It is indeed a surprising and fortunate fact that nature can be expressed by relatively low-order mathematical functions.

Rudolf Carnap

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Remember that your natural state is joy.

Wayne Dyer

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“THIS tale of my sore-troubled life I write, To thank the God of nature, who conveyed My soul to me, and with such care…

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Put on my J's and dance the whole night away Im naughty by nature like Im hip-hop hooray With my hands in the sky,…

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Borrow trouble for yourself, if that's your nature, but don't lend it to your neighbours.

Rudyard Kipling

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There is no human nature, since there is no god to conceive it.

Jean-Paul Sartre

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“Men mistook measurement for understanding. And they always had to put themselves at the center of everything. That was their greatest conceit. The earth is becoming warmer-it must be our fault! The mountain is destroying us-we have not propitiated the gods! It rains too much, it rains too little-a comfort to think that these things are somehow connected to our…

Robert Harris

“She was, he knew- and had known very early, he supposed- one of those rare and always lovely humans whose moral nature was so delicate that it must be nourished and cared for that it might be fulfilled. Alien to the world, it had to live where it could not be at home; avid for tenderness and quiet, it had…

John Williams