FastSaying

Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.


G.K. Chesterton

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EMILY DESCHANEL

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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