Chris > Chris's Quotes

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
― Mark Twain

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
― Mark Twain

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
― Mark Twain

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.”
― Mark Twain

“Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
― Mark Twain

“But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?”
― Mark Twain

“God created war so that Americans would learn geography.”
― Mark Twain

“Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.”
― Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Heretics

“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

“To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Heretics: The Annotated

“Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“You welcome your children into the world knowing that if all goes the way you plan, you won’t get to see the end of their story. It seems a sad notion until you realize that’s what gives you hope for the future.”
― David Mack, The Persistence of Memory

“Innocent people shouldn't be made to beg for their lives. The weak shouldn't have to kowtow to receive help, from us or anyone else.”
― David Mack, A Ceremony of Losses

“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire