"One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star."

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More quotes from: Gilbert K. Chesterton

• "A businessman is the only man who is forever apologizing for his occupation. "
• "A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells ..."
• "A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is ..."
• "A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over... ..."
• "A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things. "
• "A room without books is like a body without a soul. "
• "A stiff apology is a second insult... The injured party does not want to be ..."
• "A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching. "
• "A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition. "
• "A yawn is a silent shout. "
• "All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like ..."
• "All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave ..."
• "All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry. "
• "An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly ..."
• "An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered. "
• "And they that rule in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they ..."
• "And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, ..."
• "Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame. "
• "Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere. "
• "Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs. "
• "Being "contented" ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being ..."
• "Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness ..."
• "But there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen before ..."
• "Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not ..."
• "Coincidences are spiritual puns. "
• "Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern ..."
• "Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking ..."
• "Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kid of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind ..."
• "Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated. "
• "Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing ..."
• "Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable. "
• "Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to ..."
• "Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not ..."
• "Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young. "
• "Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable ..."
• "Half a truth is better than no politics. "
• "Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not ..."
• "How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win. "
• "I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean. "
• "I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but ..."
• "I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then ..."
• "I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles. "
• "I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. ..."

• "I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is ..."
• "I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees. "
• "If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man ..."
• "If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride. "
• "In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine ..."
• "It is as healthy to enjoy sentiment as to enjoy jam. "
• "It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should ..."
• "It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it. "
• "It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the ..."
• "Journalism consists largely in saying "Lord James is dead" to people who never knew Lord ..."
• "Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and ..."
• "Journalism largely consists of saying "Lord Jones is Dead" to people who never knew that ..."
• "Large organization is loose organization. Nay, it would be almost as true to say that ..."
• "Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair. "
• "Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity. "
• "Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all. "
• "Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had ..."
• "Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of ..."
• "Marriage is an adventure, like going to war. "
• "Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger ..."
• "Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They ..."
• "Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist. "
• "'My country, right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying ..."
• "Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very ..."
• "New roads; new ruts. "
• "No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle ..."
• "Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us ..."
• "Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my ..."
• "One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak. "
• "People generally quarrel because they cannot argue. "
• "People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort ..."
• "Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. "
• "Some men never feel small, but these are the few men who are. "
• "Talk about the pews and steeples and the cash that goes therewith! But the souls ..."
• "The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and ..."
• "The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably ..."
• "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult ..."
• "The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in. "
• "The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it. "
• "The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment ..."
• "The Museum is not meant either for the wanderer to see by accident or for ..."
• "The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it ..."

• "The only defensible war is a war of defense. "
• "The only way to be sure of catching a train is to miss the one ..."
• "The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his ..."
• "The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for ..."
• "The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. "
• "The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to ..."
• "The present condition of fame is merely fashion. "
• "The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense. "
• "The simplification of anything is always sensational. "
• "The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see. "
• "The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it ..."
• "The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven ..."
• "The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost. "
• "The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is ..."
• "The whole order of things is as outrageous as any miracle which could presume to ..."
• "The word "good" has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his ..."
• "Their is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the ..."
• "There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds. "
• "There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read ..."
• "There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell. "
• "There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that ..."
• "There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all ..."
• "Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may ..."
• "Those thinkers who cannot believe in any gods often assert that the love of humanity ..."
• "To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to ..."
• "To be clever enough to get all the money, one must be stupid enough to ..."
• "To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing ..."
• "Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions. "
• "Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is ..."
• "True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting ..."
• "Virtue is not the absense of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is ..."
• "We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we ..."
• "We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbour. "
• "When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted ..."
• "When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas ..."
• "White is not a mere absence of color; it is a shining and affirmative thing, ..."
• "White... is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, ..."
• "With any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain healthy humiliation. "
• "Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously. "
• "Women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes. "
• "You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and ..."