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Quotations from
G.K. Chesterton [1874-1936]
 | British author Gilbert Keith 'G.K.' Chesterton is most famous in the popular realm for the 53 'Father Brown' detective stories published between 1911 and 1936; in the academic realm, he is famous as a political thinker, lay theologian, and wide-ranging critic. |
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After WMail Issue #72 in October 2007, essays & quotations & news are being posted to the Dateline Chamesa blog
G.K. Chesterton entry at Wikipedia
55 Chesterton etexts are available online at Project Gutenberg
The American Chesterton Society [est. 1996] is based in Minnesota
G.K. Chesterton Page at BlackHat Mystery Bookstore
 | "The Works of Gilbert Keith Chesterton" for Kindle [2012]
Kindle Edition from Delphi Classics [5/2012] for $1.99 All of Chesterton's public domain works, and more, including: "The Innocence of Father Brown" [stories 1911], "Wisdom of Father Brown" [stories 1914], and "Uncollected Stories of Father Brown" with index of all three and the original illustrations; five novels, with illustrations; three short story collections, with index; three poetry collections, with index; stageplays "Magic' [1913] and "The Turkey and The Turk" [1925]; 25 non-fiction books, each with index; uncollected essays, with rare articles by Chesterton; four critical books and other essays; and an image gallery including still photos from motion pictures |
“It is the chief value of legend to mix up the centuries while preserving the sentiment.”
in "The Ballad of The White Horse" (1911) {blog 3/2010}
• •
“There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and a
tired man who wants a book to read.” {blog 6/2011}
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“If someone thinks that he does not live by a philosophy, then what he really lives by are the scraps
and tail-ends of other people's broken and discarded philosophies.” {blog 10/2011}
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“We must learn to love life without ever trusting it.” {blog 3/2012}
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“Silence is the unbearable repartee.” {blog 4/2012}
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“Wit is a sword; it is meant to make people feel the point as well as see it.” {blog 8/2012}
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“There are no rationalists. We all believe in fairy tales, and live in them.” {blog 9/2012}
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“A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.” {blog 10/2012}
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“The only way of catching a train [that] I have ever discovered is to miss the train before.” {blog 11/2012}
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“The problem with capitalism is not too many capitalists, but not enough capitalists.” {blog 11/2012}
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“The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.” {blog 1/2013}
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“Theology is simply the part of religion that requires brains.” {blog 7/2013}
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“When men stop believing in God they don't believe in nothing: they believe in anything.” (often attributed to Chesterton) {blog 8/2013}
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“Tolerance is the virtue of a man without conviction.” {blog 8/2013}
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“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.” {blog 6/2015}
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I am silent in the club,
I am silent in the pub,
I am silent on a bally peak in Darien
For I stuff away for life
Shoving peas in with a knife
Because I am at heart a Vegetarian.
No more the milk of cows
Shall pollute my private house
Than the milk of the wild mares of the Barbarian.
I will stick to port and sherry,
For they are so very, very
So very, very, very Vegetarian.
{blog 1/2018}
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“The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.” {blog 2/2018}
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“If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” {blog 5/2018}
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“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” {blog 6/2018}
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“The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.” {blog 6/2018}
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“A great nation ought not to be a hammer, but a magnet.” {blog 12/2018}
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“Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” {blog 12/2019}
G.K. Chesterton Quotations Not Yet Used on Blog
"He is a [sane] man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head."
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