A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
G.K. Chesterton
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A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
G. K. CHESTERTON A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Pornography tells lies about women. But pornography tells the truth about men.
JOHN STOLTENBERG With a good friend it’s not always how long you knew them, but how well you did.
JANET GURTLER THE TRUTH ABOUT US If you love her. If you want her to stay. Fight for her.
JANET GURTLER THE TRUTH ABOUT US No one ever tells us the truth, even those we love.
ANNA HELD An enemy is anyone who tells the truth about you.
ELBERT HUBBARD An enemy is anyone who tells the truth about you
ELBERT HUBBARD When a man really tells the truth, the first truth he tells is that he himself is a liar.
G.K. CHESTERTON Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a m...
G. K. CHESTERTON Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a m...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON He tells me there'll be no sex in it, and I expect there won't. It's a very moral novel about life t...
BRIAN MCMASTER In every first novel the hero is the author as Christ or Faust.
OSCAR WILDE No one tells the truth about indifference. Indifference is the next best thing to love.
MARTY RUBIN I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the auth...
EDITH WHARTON A prophet is not a man who tells the future; he is a man who tells the truth.
HAROLD KUSHNER because it always tells you the truth.
CAROLINE RHEA A pessimist is a man who tells the truth prematurely.
CYRANO DE BERGERAC A pessimist is a man who tells the truth prematurely.
EDMOND ROSTAND A man who tells lies, like me, merely hides the truth. But a man who tells half-lies has forgotten w...
CLAUDE RAINS When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her
ADRIENNE RICH When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.
ADRIENNE RICH I am also an author. Please check out my novel, A Life Worth Dreaming About.
NICHOLAS DETTMANN A lie may fool someone else, but it tells you the truth: you're weak.
TOM WOLFE One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE If you're writing an opinion piece, it's your job to write your opinion. If, on the other ha...
DAVID MAMET No one believes a liar even when he tells the truth
AESOP The coach wants us not to only do good in sports but academically. He tells us not to throw away our...
BRYCE CARTER Even the crudest, most derivative novel is an expression of the author's hopes and fears and ide...
STEVEN SAYLOR Love is like a novel, But with you its a picture book.
DEVYN WESLEY BARA-NAVARRETTE Country music is the people's music. It just speaks about real life and about truth and it tells...
FAITH HILL This temperature tells us something very fundamental about the properties of dark matter.
GERRY GILMORE A good novel, one which entices the author as much as it beckons the reader.
W.J. RAYMOND Hopefully that just tells us that much more about our team.
ANDREW BRACKMAN All religions, in their pure form, will tell you God is Love. And power, fear, division, judgment, o...
THE TRUTH When you look back with regret, that (regret, loss) becomes your focus.
Then your focus direct...
THE TRUTH The 'all for me and only me' mentality is the most destructive force on earth.
THE TRUTH When you look back with regret, that (regret, loss) becomes your focus.
Then your focus direct...
THE TRUTH We need not fear death, for it is simply the next phase of life. We never die, we simply change form...
THE TRUTH Any perceived 'rejection' is simply a 're-direction'.
THE TRUTH Without awareness, every one of us is at risk of living trapped, an unfulfilled trace of our self, b...
THE TRUTH Liar: One who tells an unpleasant truth.
ANONYMOUS The process of writing a novel is getting to know more about the novel until you know everything abo...
MARTIN AMIS That tells you something about its origin. Does it come from the asteroid belt or does or come from ...
PETER BROWN The contemporary crime novel is, at its best, a novel of character. That's where the suspense co...
VAL MCDERMID She tells us about staying in the moment, avoiding distractions, staying confident. She talks about ...
HEATHER STRONG The Invisible World reveals to us this Truth within its silence.
JACQUELINE RIPSTEIN The suspense of a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist, who is intensely curious abo...
MARY MCCARTHY It's not profound literature, but it's an adventure story and quite a good adventure story, very une...
DAVID THOMSON The media is not at all homogeneous in the way it tells us about war.
BRUCE JACKSON All we know about the new economic world tells us that nations which train engineers will prevail ov...
RICHARD LAMM A writer paradoxically seeks the truth and tells lies every step of the way.
ANNE LAMOTT Writing a novel is easier than writing a memoir; you are not constrained by the truth.
STEVE BISLEY Our advertising tells the truth, and we stand by it.
DAN SCHAFER Language always betrays us, tells the truth when we want to lie, and dissolves into formlessness whe...
JEANETTE WINTERSON The kids are already talking about it. This game tells us we are a legitimate state title threat.
MARK LEROSE A fragmented film such as 'Babel' gives the impression of 'edginess' but, in its for...
GARTH RISK HALLBERG A house, having been willfully purchased and furnished, tells us more than a body, and its descripti...
JOHN UPDIKE They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth.
PLATO Nature tells the truth as it is; it has no euphemism
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA History, at its best, always tells us as much indirectly about ourselves as it does directly about o...
EDMUND MORGAN A novel should be an experience and convey an emotional truth rather than arguments.
JOYCE CARY He's always positive. He's always pumping us up after we come off the field. He tells us stores abou...
MARTEL STRANGE He who is caught in a lie is not believed when he tells the truth.
SPANISH PROVERB If humor and rumor are needed more than faith and truth, then it tells me something about the kind o...
TOBA BETA Science tells us the more intelligent a person is, the less conservative and more liberal they becom...
CHRISTINA ENGELA Those who foretell the future lies, even if he tells the truth.
ARABIC PROVERB He who foretells the future lies, even if he tells the truth.
ARABIAN PROVERB A good novel should be deeply unsettling - its satisfactions should come from its authenticity and i...
DANA SPIOTTA Life can be long or short, it all depends on how you choose to live it. it's like forever, always ch...
SARAH DESSEN There were so many people, so much to navigate, and as the distance fluctuated between us his hand k...
SARAH DESSEN Forever [is] so many different things. It is always changing... it is twenty minutes, or a hundred y...
SARAH DESSEN karma's a bitch, and so am I
RACHEL CAINE The truth is, you have about three paragraphs in a short story, three pages in a novel, to capture t...
NANCY KRESS The twentieth century may tell us that we have nothing to be complacent about in the recent history ...
ROWAN WILLIAMS “The good book tells you to ‘love thy neighbor’, the bad book tells you how to.”
PRABHUDOSS SAMUEL If the truth doesn't save us, what does that say about us?
LOIS MCMASTER BUJOLD If humor and rumor are needed more than faith and truth,
then it tells me something about the ...
TOBA BETA A novel can enlarge the empathy and imagination of both its author and its reader, and my experience...
ANTHONY MARRA My dear fellow, the truth isn’t quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl. ...
OSCAR WILDE Passive righteousness tells us that God does not need our good works. Active righteousness tells us ...
TULLIAN TCHIVIDJIAN Failure and success are a team. Failure tells us what doesn't work, and success tells us what does w...
JIM GENOVESE Cognitive psychology tells us that the unaided human mind is vulnerable to many fallacies and illusi...
STEVEN PINKER I prefer when a person is upfront and tells me the truth than having someone skulk about telling lie...
GARY F EVANS... I'm interested not only in that it's beautiful and that it's Gorham, but also what it tells us about...
ELISABETH AGRO معظم البشر أعينهم مغلقة بغبار الخيبة إلى حدّ يمنعهم من ...
ELIZABETH GILBERT In society, one doesn't tell the truth, one tells the exact opposite.
NELSON EDDY Everybody has a Big Momma: the mother or the grandmother who tells it like it is, keeps it real with...
MARTIN LAWRENCE The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but...
OSWALD CHAMBERS The truth of a myth, your Honor, is not its words but its patterns.
DAVID MITCHELL That's a good win for us. That's a good win for our ball club because it tells us that we're getting...
COLIN STEVENS That's what it's supposed to do--speak truth to power. I'm not surprised by this...hip-hop tells the...
JEFF CHANG The title of the work, its place in the collective library, the nature of the person who tells us ab...
PIERRE BAYARD I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the auth...
EDITH WHARTON Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our fl...
TIMOTHY J. KELLER I am not a person who believes in LOVE. Love creates doubt about its consistency in the long run. Bu...
EPHDAN One of my heroes, G.K. Chesterton, said, "The old fairy tales endure forever. The old fairy tale mak...
REGINA DOMAN Usually when I can't see the truth about a thing its because I feel more comfortable with the lie...
DANIEL GILMAN When no one you know tells the truth, you learn to see under the surface.
CASSANDRA CLARE A budget tells us what we can't afford, but it doesn't keep us from buying it.
WILLIAM FEATHER
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For all their wars are merry, and al...
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G.K. CHESTERTON If it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly.
(on not perfectionism
to put things off)
.
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committees.
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advice, and then going away and do...
G.K CHESTERTON How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you
win.
G.K CHESTERTON To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labours, and holidays; to be...
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G.K. CHESTERTON The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.
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G.K. CHESTERTON Therefore I see no wrong in riding with the Nightmare to-night; she whinnies to me from the rocking ...
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G.K. CHESTERTON Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.
G.K. CHESTERTON A Second Childhood.”
When all my days are ending
And I have no song to sing,
...
G.K. CHESTERTON If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despot...
G.K. CHESTERTON Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice ...
G.K. CHESTERTON Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.
G.K. CHESTERTON It [feminism] is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers bu...
G.K. CHESTERTON I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
G.K. CHESTERTON Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.
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G.K. CHESTERTON Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are...
G.K. CHESTERTON Modern art has to be what is called ‘intense.’ it is not easy to define being intense; but, roug...
G.K. CHESTERTON It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.
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G.K. CHESTERTON But when first the two black dragons sprang out of the fog upon the small clerk, they had merely th...
G.K. CHESTERTON Monotony has nothing to do with a place; monotony, either in its sensation or its infliction, is sim...
G.K. CHESTERTON Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.
G.K. CHESTERTON The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.
G.K. CHESTERTON A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.
G.K. CHESTERTON There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
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G.K. CHESTERTON If there were no God, there would be no atheists.
G.K. CHESTERTON I have little doubt that when St. George had killed the dragon he was heartily afraid of the princes...
G.K. CHESTERTON The woman does not work because the man tells her to work and she obeys. On the contrary, the woman ...
G.K. CHESTERTON And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity c...
G.K. CHESTERTON In the struggle for existence, it is only on those who hang on for ten minutes after all is hopeless...
G.K. CHESTERTON I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. Th...
G.K. CHESTERTON That is the one eternal education: to be sure enough that something is true that you dare to tell it...
G.K. CHESTERTON The man who kills a man kills a man.
The man who kills himself kills all men.
As far as he...
G.K. CHESTERTON The things we see every day are the things we never see at all.
G.K. CHESTERTON When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become c...
G.K. CHESTERTON The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister.
G.K. CHESTERTON We should always endeavor to wonder at the permanent thing, not at the mere exception. We should be ...
G.K. CHESTERTON Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the ...
G.K. CHESTERTON The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.
G.K. CHESTERTON But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore h...
G.K. CHESTERTON We fear men so much, because we fear God so little. One fear cures another. When man's terror scares...
G.K. CHESTERTON There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there.
G.K. CHESTERTON Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.
G.K. CHESTERTON It may well be on such a night of clouds and cruel colors that there is brought forth upon the earth...
G.K. CHESTERTON It was his home now. But it could not be his home till he had gone from it and returned to it. Now h...
G.K. CHESTERTON The Catholic Church is like a thick steak, a glass of red wine, and a good cigar.
G.K. CHESTERTON A man must be prepared not only to be a martyr, but to be a fool. It is absurd to say that a man is ...
G.K. CHESTERTON Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is mor...
G.K. CHESTERTON The modern mind is forced towards the future by a certain sense of fatigue, not unmixed with terror,...
G.K. CHESTERTON People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read mor...
G.K. CHESTERTON Among the rich you will never find a really generous man even by accident. They may give their money...
G.K. CHESTERTON All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a...
G.K. CHESTERTON The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and ...
G.K. CHESTERTON The difference between the poet and the mathematician is that the poet tries to get his head into th...
G.K. CHESTERTON Coincidences are spiritual puns.
G.K. CHESTERTON This man's spiritual power has been precisely this, that he has distinguished between custom and cre...
G.K. CHESTERTON There again," said Syme irritably, "what is there poetical about being in revolt? You might as well ...
G.K. CHESTERTON The most poetical thing in the world is not being sick.
G.K. CHESTERTON The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul...
G.K. CHESTERTON The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul...
G.K. CHESTERTON Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
G.K. CHESTERTON I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness double...
G.K. CHESTERTON ...but this is the real objection to that torrent of modern talk about treating crime as disease, ab...
G.K. CHESTERTON Think of all those ages through which men have had the courage to die, and then remember that we hav...
G.K. CHESTERTON Thrift is poetic because it is creative; waste is unpoetic because it is waste.
G.K. CHESTERTON The future is a blank wall on which every man can write his own name as large as he likes; the past ...
G.K. CHESTERTON The more truly we can see life as a fairytale, the more clearly the tale resolves itself into war wi...
G.K. CHESTERTON It is quite easy to see why a legend is treated, and ought to be treated, more respectfully than a b...
G.K. CHESTERTON I always like a dog so long as he isn't spelled backward.
G.K. CHESTERTON She(Joan of Arc) put her dreams and her sentiment into her aims, where they ought to be; she put her...
G.K. CHESTERTON In the glad old days, before the rise of modern morbidities...it used to be thought a disadvantage t...
G.K. CHESTERTON Modern tragic writers have to write short stories; if they wrote long stories…cheerfulness would c...
G.K. CHESTERTON The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.
G.K. CHESTERTON To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
G.K. CHESTERTON ... just as when we see a pig in a litter larger than the other pigs, we know that by an unalterable...
G.K. CHESTERTON And it did certainly appear that the prophets had put the people (engaged in the old game of Cheat t...
G.K. CHESTERTON Then the small man suddenly ran after them and said:
"I want to get my haircut. I say, do you k...
G.K. CHESTERTON Adam Wayne, the conqueror, with his face flung back and his mane like a lion's, stood with his great...
G.K. CHESTERTON Cooking is an art; it has in it personality, and even perversity, for the definition of an art is th...
G.K. CHESTERTON I can only put it sufficiently curtly in a careless simile. A Socialist means a man who thinks a wal...
G.K. CHESTERTON In the lower classes the school master does not work for the parent, but against the parent. Modern ...
G.K. CHESTERTON The only persons who seem to have nothing to do with the education of the children are the parents.
G.K. CHESTERTON We have actually contrived to invent a new kind of hypocrite. The old hypocrite, Tartuffe or Pecksni...
G.K. CHESTERTON Now I have no notion at all of propounding a new ideal. There is no new ideal imaginable by the madn...
G.K. CHESTERTON If you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will have no answer ...
G.K. CHESTERTON There are, I believe, some who still deny that England is governed by an oligarchy. It is quite enou...
G.K. CHESTERTON But of all the instances of error arising from this physical fancy, the worst is that we have before...
G.K. CHESTERTON Thrift is the really romantic thing; economy is more romantic than extravagance... But the thing is ...
G.K. CHESTERTON A head can be beaten small enough until it fits the hat.
G.K. CHESTERTON No one has even begun to understand comradeship who does not accept with it a certain hearty eagerne...
G.K. CHESTERTON No one has even begun to understand comradeship who does not accept with it a certain hearty eagerne...
G.K. CHESTERTON Men have not got tired of Christianity; they have never found enough Christianity to get tired of. M...
G.K. CHESTERTON It is very currently suggested that the modern man is the heir of all the ages, that he has got the ...
G.K. CHESTERTON Thrift is poetic because it is creative.
G.K. CHESTERTON The chicken does not exist only in order to produce another egg. He may also exist to amuse himself,...
G.K. CHESTERTON No man demands what he desires; each man demands what he fancies he can get. Soon people forget what...
G.K. CHESTERTON There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any more than in off...
G.K. CHESTERTON When a man really tells the truth, the first truth he tells is that he himself is a liar.
G.K. CHESTERTON In all legends men have thought of women as sublime separately but horrible in a herd.
G.K. CHESTERTON All true friendliness begins with fire and food and drink and the recognition of rain or frost. ...E...
G.K. CHESTERTON Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly, wo...
G.K. CHESTERTON An historic institution, which never went right, is really quite much of a miracle as an institution...
G.K. CHESTERTON As for the general view that the Church was discredited by the War—they might as well say that the...
G.K. CHESTERTON The paradise of my fancy is one where pigs have wings
G.K. CHESTERTON ..."vers libre," (free verse) or nine-tenths of it, is not a new metre any more than sleeping in a d...
G.K. CHESTERTON I do not deny, but strongly affirm, the right of the State to interfere to cure a great evil. I say ...
G.K. CHESTERTON To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once.
G.K. CHESTERTON If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ...
G.K. CHESTERTON It is quite certain that the skirt means female dignity, not female submission; it can be proved by ...
G.K. CHESTERTON On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the...
G.K. CHESTERTON The center of every man's existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accide...
G.K. CHESTERTON I had tried to be happy by telling myself that man is an animal, like any other which sought its mea...
G.K. CHESTERTON [Fairy tales] make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run...
G.K. CHESTERTON That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already, but that God could ha...
G.K. CHESTERTON If Innocent is happy, it is because he is innocent. If he can defy the conventions, it is just becau...
G.K. CHESTERTON There is something sinister about putting a leprechaun in a workhouse. The only solid comfort is tha...
G.K. CHESTERTON Man may behold what ugliness he likes if he is sure that he will not worship it; but there are some ...
G.K. CHESTERTON If we are calm," replied the policeman, "it is the calm of organized resistance."
"Eh?" said Sy...
G.K. CHESTERTON Do not be proud of the fact that your grandmother was shocked at something which your are accustomed...
G.K. CHESTERTON As long as the vision of heaven is always changing, the vision of earth will be exactly the same. No...
G.K. CHESTERTON I mean that we here are on the wrong side of the tapestry,' answered Father Brown. 'The things that ...
G.K. CHESTERTON How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.
G.K. CHESTERTON The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens...
G.K. CHESTERTON No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for edu...
G.K. CHESTERTON A man's minor actions and arrangements ought to be free, flexible, creative; the things that should ...
G.K. CHESTERTON A detective story generally describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. A mode...
G.K. CHESTERTON These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own.
G.K. CHESTERTON There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.
G.K. CHESTERTON Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, b...
G.K. CHESTERTON There is a limit to human charity," said Lady Outram, trembling all over.
"There is," sai...
G.K. CHESTERTON He wondered why the pelican was the symbol of charity, except it was that it wanted a good deal of c...
G.K. CHESTERTON Charity is the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible. Hope is the power of being ...
G.K. CHESTERTON We do not admire, we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this world for love of the other. But wha...
G.K. CHESTERTON Dear Sir: Regarding your article 'What's Wrong with the World?' I am. Yours truly,
G.K. CHESTERTON There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.
G.K. CHESTERTON We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practica...
G.K. CHESTERTON He may be mad, but there's method in his madness. There nearly always is method in madness. It's wha...
G.K. CHESTERTON If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
G.K. CHESTERTON The first two facts which a healthy boy or girl feels about sex are these: first that it is beautifu...
G.K. CHESTERTON I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.
G.K. CHESTERTON My country, right or wrong,” is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperat...
G.K. CHESTERTON The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.
G.K. CHESTERTON Can you not see, […] that fairy tales in their essence are quite solid and straightforward; but th...
G.K. CHESTERTON the things common to all men are more important than the things peculiar to any men. Ordinary things...
G.K. CHESTERTON The pessimists believe that the cosmos is a clock that is running down; the progressives believe it ...
G.K. CHESTERTON