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"The principle is this: that in everything worth having, even in every pleasure, there is a point of pain and tedium that must be survived, so that the pleasure may revive and endure. The joy of battle comes after the first fear of death; the joy of reading Virgil comes after the bore of learning him; the glow of the seabather comes after the icy shok of the sea bath."
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"Reality spilled out into the alley like water from an overfilled bowl - as sound, as smell, as image, as plea, as response."

"All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience."

"Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience."

"Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?"

"All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it."

"Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation."

"Observing and commenting, it is a piece of cake.Experiencing and sharing, that is a piece of work."

"Enthusiasm - a distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience."

"Experience, derived from scientific investigation, led to all the scientific literature in history. Likewise, experience, derived from religious transcendence, led to all the religious scriptures in history. It's never the other way around."
Explore more quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

"Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate."

"One sees great things from the valley only small things from the peak."

"There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man. That is a perfectly simple fact which the modern world will find out more and more to be a fact. Every other basis is a sort of sentimental confusion, full of merely verbal echoes of the older creeds. Those verbal associations are always vain for the vital purpose of constraining the tyrant."

"The Christian optimism is based on the fact that we do not fit in to the world."

"The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered...it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful."

"I said to him, "Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums."

"Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense, every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else."

"It is now certain that the public does know. It is not so certain that the public does care."

"The obvious effect of frivolous divorce will be frivolous marriage. If people can be separated for no reason they will feel it all the easier to be united for no reason."
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