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"Is dishwater dull? Naturalists with microscopes have told me that it teems with quiet fun."
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"The bowl is warmer than the soup."

"No writer has an imaginative power richer than what the streets offer."

"Good God. Men everywhere."

"As far as she could see, children mostly argued, shouted, ran around very fast, laughed loudly, picked their noses, got dirty and sulked."

"He reads much;He is a great observer and he looksQuite through the deeds of men: he loves no plays,As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music;Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sortAs if he mock'd himself and scorn'd his spiritThat could be moved to smile at any thing.Such men as he be never at heart's easeWhiles they behold a greater than themselves,And therefore are they very dangerous."

"Society in its boundless ignorance ridicules the caterpillar but praises the butterfly."

"Dickens writes that one of his characters, "listened to everything without seeming to, which showed he understood his business."

"Novelists should never allow themselves to weary of the study of real life. If they observed this duty conscientiously, they would give us fewer pictures chequered with vivid contrasts of light and shade; they would seldom elevate their heroes and heroines to the heights of rapture - still seldomer sink them to the depths of despair; for if we rarely taste the fulness of joy in this life, we yet more rarely savour the acrid bitterness of hopeless anguish."

"When you see a married couple coming down the street the one who is two or three steps ahead is the one who's mad."
Explore more quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

"It is quite futile to argue that man is small compared to the cosmos, for man was always small compared to the nearest tree."

"A puddle repeats infinity, and is full of light; nevertheless, if analyzed objectively, a puddle is a piece of dirty water spread very thin on mud."

"Job is an optimist. He shakes the pillars of the world and strikes insanely at the heavens; he lashes the stars, but it is not to silence them; it is to make them speak."

"A man reading the Dickens novel wished that it might never end. Men read a Dickens story six times because they knew it so well."

"And they that rule in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they have no graves as yet."

"When modern sociologists talk of the necessity of accommodating one's self to the trend of the time, they forget that the trend of the time at its best consists entirely of people who will not accommodate themselves to anything. At its worst it consists of many millions of frightened creatures all accommodating themselves to a trend that is not there. And that is becoming more and more the situation...Every man speaks of public opinion, and means by public opinion, public opinion minus his opinion."

"Once I thought it delightful and astonishing to find a present so big that it only went halfway into the stocking. Now I am delighted and astonished every morning to find a present so big that it takes two stockings to hold it, and then leaves a great deal outside; it is the large and preposterous present of myself."

"The word "good" has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man."
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