"It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Absurdity
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"I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Advice
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"Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Age and Aging
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"Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Democracy
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"There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Dullness
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"Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Education
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"It is as healthy to enjoy sentiment as to enjoy jam."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Emotions
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"When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it. The two things that nearly all of us have thoroughly and really been through are childhood and youth. And though we would not have them back again on any account, we feel that they are both beautiful, because we have drunk them dry."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Experience
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"Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Experience
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"The present condition of fame is merely fashion."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Fame
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"The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Family
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"The timidity of the child or the savage is entirely reasonable; they are alarmed at this world, because this world is a very alarming place. They dislike being alone because it is verily and indeed an awful idea to be alone. Barbarians fear the unknown for the same reason that Agnostics worship it --because it is a fact."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Fear
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"The full value of this life can only be got by fighting; the violent take it by storm. And if we have accepted everything we have missed something -- war. This life of ours is a very enjoyable fight, but a very miserable truce."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Fights and Fighting
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"You cannot love a thing without wanting to fight for it."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Fights and Fighting
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"Most Americans are born drunk, and really require a little wine or beer to sober them. They have a sort of permanent intoxication from within, a sort of invisible champagne. Americans do not need to drink to inspire them to do anything, though they do sometimes, I think, need a little for the deeper and more delicate purpose of teaching them how to do nothing."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Alcohol and Alcoholism
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"There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on America
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"Psychoanalysis is confession without absolution."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Analysis
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"Angels fly because they take themselves lightly."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Angels
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"The golden age only comes to men when they have forgotten gold."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Gold
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"Evil comes at leisure like the disease. Good comes in a hurry like the doctor."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Good and Evil
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"There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Greatness
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"The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Growth
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"Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalized."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Happiness
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"One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Hatred
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"Their is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Heart
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"Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on History and Historians
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"To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Hope
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"Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Humankind
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"Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it -- or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Hygiene
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"We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Hypocrisy
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"What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Impartiality
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"The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Innocence
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"Merely having an open mind is nothing; the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Intelligence and Intellectuals
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"A large section of the intelligentsia seems wholly devoid of intelligence."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Intelligence and Intellectuals
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"There are no uninteresting things, there are only uninterested people."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Interest
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"A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Intuition
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"The old idea that the joke was not good enough for the company has been superseded by the new aristocratic idea that the company was not worthy of the joke. They have introduced an almost insane individualism into that one form of intercourse which is specially and uproariously communal. They have made even levities into secrets. They have made laughter lonelier than tears."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Jokes and Jokers
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"Journalism consists largely in saying Lord James is dead to people who never knew Lord James was alive."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Journalism and Journalists
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"Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers another."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Journalism and Journalists
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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 away the veils from private life; but it seems to me to be always dropping diaphanous but blinding veils between men and men. The Yellow Press is abused for exposing facts which are private; I wish the Yellow Press did anything so valuable. It is exactly the decisive individual touches that it never gives; and a proof of this is that after one has met a man a million times in the newspapers it is always a complete shock and reversal to meet him in real life."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on Journalism and Journalists
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