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I Don't Deny," He Said, "that There Should Be Priests To Remind Men That They Will One Day Die. I Only Say That At Certain Strange Epochs It Is Necessary To Have Another Kind Of Priests, Called Poets, Actually To Remind Men That They Are Not Dead Yet.
-Gilbert K. Chesterton
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I Don't Deny," He

Gilbert K. Chesterton
I Don't Deny," He Said, "that There Should Be Priests To Remind Men That They Will One Day Die. I Only Say That At Certain Strange Epochs It Is Necessary To Have Another Kind Of Priests, Called Poets, Actually To Remind Men That They Are Not Dead Yet.
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Topic
Men
One Day
Strange
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Past
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Giving
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Minorities
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Century
Chiefs
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Passion
Men
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Boredom
Long
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Honest
Solemnity
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Mean
Practice
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Art
Soul
Faces
...a Figure Of Speech Can Often Get Into A Crack Too Small For A Definition.
Cracks
Speech
Definitions
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Pages
St Thomas
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Writing
Character
Mean
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Death
Philosophy
Science
The Center Of Every Man's Existence Is A Dream.
Dream
Men
Anticipation
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Men
Aquariums
Literature
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Doe
Dogma
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Order
Giving
Alternatives
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Happiness
Real
Pleasure Seeking
One Sees Great Things From The Valley; Only Small Things From The Peak.
Nature
Adversity
Mountain Peaks
It Was The Mystical Dogma Of Bentham And Adam Smith And The Rest, That Some Of The Worst Of Human Passions Would Turn Out To Be All For The Best. It Was The Mysterious Doctrine That Selfishness Would Do The Work Of Unselfishness.
Passion
Selfishness
Doctrine
A Man Cannot Have The Energy To Produce Good Art Without Having The Energy To Wish To Pass Beyond It.
Art
Men
Wish
Science Is The Study Of The Admitted Laws Of Existence, Which Cannot Prove A Universal Negative About Whether Those Laws Could Ever Be Suspended By Something Admittedly Above Them. It Is As If We Were To Say That A Lawyer Was So Deeply Learned In The American Constitution That He Knew There Could Never Be A Revolution In America.
Science
Law
America
Madness Does Not Come By Breaking Out, But By Giving In; By Settling Down In Some Dirty, Little, Self-repeating Circle Of Ideas; By Being Tamed.
Dirty
Self
Circles
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Anger
Men
May
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Funny
Travel
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Holy Places
Morality
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Air
Literature
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Pennies
Divine
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Simple
Simplicity
World
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Art
Caring
Thinking
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Writing
Long
Waiting
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Men
People
House
Shall I Tell You The Secret Of The Whole World? It Is That We Have Only Known The Back Of The World. We See Everything From Behind, And It Looks Brutal. That Is Not A Tree, But The Back Of A Tree. That Is Not A Cloud, But The Back Of A Cloud. Cannot You See That Everything Is Stooping And Hiding A Face? If We Could Only Get Round In Front--
Clouds
Tree
Secret
No Man Can Be Merry Unless He Is Serious.
Men
Serious
Merry
The Modern World... Has No Notion Except That Of Simplifying Something By Destroying Nearly Everything.
Simplicity
World
Modern
When People Begin To Ignore Human Dignity, It Will Not Be Long Before They Begin To Ignore Human Rights.
Rights
Long
People
It Is A Strange Thing That Many Truly Spiritual Men, Such As General Gordon, Have Actually Spent Some Hours In Speculating Upon The Precise Location Of The Garden Of Eden. Most Probably We Are In Eden Still. It Is Only Our Eyes That Have Changed.
Spiritual
Eye
Men
Man Is More Himself, Man Is More Manlike, When Joy Is The Fundamental Thing In Him, And Grief The Superficial. Melancholy Should Be An Innocent Interlude, A Tender And Fugitive State Of Mind; Praise Should Be The Permanent Pulsation Of The Soul. Pessimism Is At Best An Emotional Half-holiday; Joy Is The Uproarious Labor By Which All Things Live? Christianity Satisfies Suddenly And Perfectly Man's Ancestral Instinct For Being The Right Way Up; Satisfies It Supremely In This, That By Its Creed Joy Becomes Something Gigantic, And Sadness Something Special And Small.
Christian
Grief
Holiday
Men Spoke Much In My Boyhood About Restricted Or Ruined Men Of Genius: And It Was Common To Say That Many A Man Was A Great Might-have-been. To Me It's A More Solid And Startling Fact That Any Man In The Street Is A Great Might-not-have-been.
Men
Genius
Might
I Owe My Success To Having Listened Respectfully To The Very Best Advice, And Then Going Away And Doing The Exact Opposite.
Inspirational
Motivational
Success
Whether A Man Chooses To Tell The Truth In Long Sentences Or Short Jokes Is A Problem Analogous To Whether He Chooses To Tell The Truth In French Or In German.
Men
Long
Problem
Not Only Does "orthodox" No Longer Mean Being Right, It Practically Means Being Wrong.
Mean
Doe
Orthodox
Monotony Has Nothing To Do With A Place; Monotony, Either In Its Sensation Or Its Infliction, Is Simply The Quality Of A Person. There Are No Dreary Sights; There Are Only Dreary Sight Seers.
Sight
Bored
Quality
The Greatest Political Storm Flutters Only A Fringe Of Humanity. But An Ordinary Man And An Ordinary Woman And Their Ordinary Children Literally Alter The Destiny Of Nations.
Children
Destiny
Men
There Is More To Life Than Increasing Its Speed. Gandhi Gave My Life To Become The Person I Am Right Now. Was It Worth It? Richard Bach Life Exists For The Love Of Music Or Beautiful Things.
Beautiful
Music Love
Speed
He Has Come To The Most Dreadful Conclusion A Literary Man Can Come To, The Conclusion That The Ordinary View Is The Right One. It Is Only The Last And Wildest Kind Of Courage That Can Stand On A Tower Before Ten Thousand People And Tell Them That Twice Two Is Four.
Men
Views
Two
You Can't Have The Family Farm Without The Family.
Economic
Family Farms
Farms
The Function Of The Imagination Is Not To Make Strange Things Settled, So Much As To Make Settled Things Strange.
Imagination
Strange
Function
The Modern Mind Will Accept Nothing On Authority, But Will Accept Anything On No Authority. Say That The Bible Or The Pope Says So And It Will Be Dismissed Without Further Examination. But Preface Your Remark With "i Think I Heard Somewhere," Or, Try But Fail To Remember The Name Of Some Professor Who Might Have Said "such-and-such," And It Will Be Immediately Accepted As An Unshakable Fact.
Thinking
Names
Catholic
The State Did Not Own Men So Entirely, Even When It Could Send Them To The Stake, As It Sometimes Does Now Where It Can Send Them To The Elementary School.
School
Men
Doe
Aristocracy Is An Atmosphere; It Is Sometimes A Healthy Atmosphere; But It Is Very Hard To Say When It Becomes An Unhealthy Atmosphere. You Can Prove That A Man Is Not The Son Of A King, Or That He Is Not The Delegate Of A Definite Number Of People. But You Cannot Prove That A Man Is Not A Gentleman.
Kings
Son
Men
How Can It Be A Large Career To Tell Other People's Children About The Rule Of Three, And A Small Career To Tell One's Own Children About The Universe? How Can It Be Broad To Be The Same Thing To Everyone, And Narrow To Be Everything To Someone? No; A Woman's Function Is Laborious, But Because It Is Gigantic, Not Because It Is Minute. I Will Pity Mrs. Jones For The Hugeness Of Her Task; I Will Never Pity Her For Its Smallness.
Children
Motherhood
Careers
For Religion All Men Are Equal, As All Pennies Are Equal, Because The Only Value Of Any Of Them Is That They Bear The Image Of The King.
Kings
Equality
Men
Men Reform A Thing By Removing The Reality From It, And Then Do Not Know What To Do With The Unreality That Is Left.
Reality
Men
Progress
We Should Thank God For Beer And Burgundy By Not Drinking Too Much Of Them.
Drinking
Beer
Thank God
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 Monotony That Makes All Daisies Alike; It May Be That God Makes Every Daisy Separately, But Has Never Gotten 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.
Strong
Morning
Father
If The World Grows To Worldly, It Can Be Rebuked By The Church; But If The Church Grows To Worldly, It Cannot Be Adequately Rebuked For Worldlyness By The World.
Church
World
Grows
These Are The Days When The Christian Is Expected To Praise Every Creed Except His Own.
Christian
Religion
Morality
It Is The Simple Truth That Man Does Differ From The Brutes In Kind And Not In Degree; And The Proof Of It Is Here; That It Sounds Like A Truism To Say That The Most Primitive Man Drew A Picture Of A Monkey And That It Sounds Like A Joke To Say That The Most Intelligent Monkey Drew A Picture Of A Man. Something Of Division And Disproportion Has Appeared; And It Is Unique. Art Is The Signature Of Man.
Art
Intelligent
Unique
Latter-day Scepticism Is Fond Of Calling Itself Progressive; But Scepticism Is Really Reactionary. Scepticism Goes Back; It Attempts To Unsettle What Has Already Been Settled. Instead Of Trying To Break Up New Fields With Its Plough, It Simply Tries To Break Up The Plough.
Trying
Calling
Fields
It Is Very Good For A Man To Talk About What He Does Not Understand; As Long As He Understands That He Does Not Understand It.
Men
Long
Doe
Impartiality Is A Pompous Name For Indifference, Which Is An Elegant Name For Ignorance.
Wisdom
Fun
Ignorance
Christianity Satisfies Suddenly And Perfectly Man's Ancestral Instinct For Being The Right Way Up; Satisfies It Supremely In This, That By Its Creed Joy Becomes Something Gigantic, And Sadness Something Special And Small.
Christian
Sadness
Men
It Is The Beginning Of All True Criticism Of Our Time To Realize That It Has Really Nothing To Say, At The Very Moment When It Has Invented So Tremendous A Trumpet For Saying It.
Power
Criticism
Speech
Nobody Understands The Nature Of The Church, Or The Ringing Note Of The Creed Descending From Antiquity, Who Does Not Realize That The Whole World Once Very Nearly Died Of Broadmindedness And The Brotherhood Of All Religions.
Brotherhood
Church
Doe
Music With Dinner Is An Insult Both To The Cook And The Violinist.
Music
Food
Literature
Properly Speaking, Of Course, There Is No Such Thing As A Return To Nature, Because There Is No Such Thing As A Departure From It. The Phrase Reminds One Of The Slightly Intoxicated Gentleman Who Gets Up In His Own Dining Room And Declares Firmly That He Must Be Getting Home.
Home
Gentleman
Dining
We All Have A Little Weakness, Which Is Very Natural But Rather Misleading, For Supposing That This Epoch Must Be The End Of The World Because It Will Be The End Of Us. How Future Generations Will Get On Without Us Is Indeed, When We Come To Think Of It, Quite A Puzzle. But I Suppose They Will Get On Somehow, And May Possibly Venture To Revise Our Judgments As We Have Revised Earlier Judgments.
Thinking
Civilization
Supposing That
Drink Because You Are Happy, But Never Because You Are Miserable.
Drinking
Alcohol
Literature
La Mejor Prueba De La Cultura Y La Liberalidad De Un Hombre Es Su Actitud Ante Las Cosas Que Nunca Sucedieron.
Very Few People In The World Would Care To Listen To The Real Defense Of Their Own Characters. The Real Defense, The Defense Which Belongs To The Day Of Judgment, Would Make Such Damaging Admissions, Would Clear Away So Many Artificial Virtues, Would Tell Such Tragedies Of Weakness And Failure, That A Man Would Sooner Be Misunderstood And Censured By The World Than Exposed To That Awful And Merciless Eulogy.
Real
Character
Men
I Defy Anybody To Say What Are The Rights Of A Citizen, If They Do Not Include The Control Of His Own Diet In Relation To His Own Health.
Rights
Citizens
Relation
And All Over The World, The Old Literature, The Popular Literature, Is The Same. It Consists Of Very Dignified Sorrow And Very Undignified Fun. Its Sad Tales Are Of Broken Hearts; Its Happy Tales Are Of Broken Heads.
Art
Fun
Broken
I Suppose Every One Must Have Reflected How Primeval And How Poetical Are The Things That One Carries In One's Pocket; The Pocket-knife, For Instance, The Type Of All Human Tools, The Infant Of The Sword. Once I Planned To Write A Book Of Poems Entirely About Things In My Pockets. But I Found It Would Be Too Long; And The Age Of The Great Epics Is Past.
Book
Writing
Epic
I Have Argued With Him On Almost Every Subject In The World, And We Have Always Been On Opposite Sides, Without Affectation Or Animosity... It Is Necessary To Disagree With Him As Much As I Do, In Order To Admire Him As I Do; And I Am Proud Of Him As A Foe Even More Than As A Friend.
Order
Opposites
World
Plato Was Right, But Not Quite Right.
Plato
Every High Civilization Decays By Forgetting Obvious Things.
Obvious Things
Civilization
Decay
I Do Not Know Much About Mohammed Or Mohammedanism. I Do Not Take The Koran To Bed With Me Every Night. But, If I Did On Some One Particular Night, There Is One Sense At Least In Which I Know What I Should Not Find There. I Apprehend That I Should Not Find The Work Abounding In Strong Encouragements To The Worship Of Idols; That The Praises Of Polytheism Would Not Be Loudly Sung; That The Character Of Mohammed Would Not Be Subjected To Anything Resembling Hatred And Derision; And That The Great Modern Doctrine Of The Unimportance Of Religion Would Not Be Needlessly Emphasised.
Encouragement
Strong
Character
The Academic Mind Reflects Infinity, And Is Full Of Light By The Simple Process Of Being Shallow And Standing Still.
Simple
Light
Mind
It Is The Test Of A Good Religion Whether You Can Joke About It.
Religion
Tests
Childlike Faith
All True Friendliness Begins With Fire And Food And Drink And The Recognition Of Rain Or Frost.
True Friend
Rain
Fire
Tea, Although An Orientalis A Gentleman At Least;cocoa Is A Cad And Coward,cocoa Is A Vulgar Beast.
Gentleman
Tea
Coward
There Is No Such Thing On Earth As An Uninteresting Subject; The Only Thing That Can Exist Is An Uninterested Person. Nothing Is More Keenly Required Than A Defence Of Bores. When Byron Divided Humanity Into The Bores And Bored, He Omitted To Notice That The Higher Qualities Exist Entirely In The Bores, The Lower Qualities In The Bored, Among Whom He Counted Himself. The Bore, By His Starry Enthusiasm, His Solemn Happiness, May, In Some Sense, Have Proved Himself Poetical. The Bored Has Certainly Proved Himself Prosaic.
Boredom
Humanity
Quality
Why Should Anything Go Right; Even Observation And Deduction? Why Should Not Good Logic Be As Misleading As Bad Logic? They Are Both Movements In The Brain Of A Bewildered Ape?
Brain
Anything Goes
Movement
In The End It Will Not Matter To Us Whether We Wrote Well Or Ill; Whether We Fought With Flails Or Reeds. It Will Matter To Us Greatly On What Side We Fought.
Matter
Sides
Reeds
I Would Maintain That Thanks Are The Highest Form Of Thought; And That Gratitude Is Happiness Doubled By Wonder.
Leadership
Thank You
Teacher
Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.


2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.


2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.


2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.


3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.


3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.


3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.



4. Proper Usage of Quotes


4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.


4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.


4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).


5. Common Mistakes to Avoid


5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.


5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.


5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.



6. Quotes in Different Contexts


6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.


6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.


6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.



7. Punctuation and Formatting


Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:


Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.


Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.


Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.



8. Ethical Considerations


Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes


Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.



Conclusion


Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.


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