Top 500 Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Featured in: Failure Quotes, Silly Quotes, Quotes About Work, Witty Quotes

2. “To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Featured in: Grace Quotes, Quotes About Hope, Compassion Quotes, Meaning of Life Quotes, Forgiveness Quotes

3. “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Featured in: Storytelling Quotes, Quotes About Hope, Quotes About Children

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Featured in: Fighting Quotes

5. “There is only one thing certain and that is that nothing is certain.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Featured in: Different Quotes

6. “Whenever you remove any fence, always pause long enough to ask why it was put there in the first place.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Featured in: Firsts Quotes, Boundaries Quotes

7. “Jesus promised his disciples three things – that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in constant trouble.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

8. “A dead thing goes with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

9. “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

10. “We’re all in the same boat, and we’re all seasick.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

11. “God is like the sun; you cannot look at it, but without it you cannot look at anything else.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

12. “It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Featured in: Problem-Solving Quotes

13. “Right is Right even if nobody does it. Wrong is wrong even if everybody is wrong about it.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Featured in: Truth Quotes, Conscience Quotes, Principles And Laws

14. “Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Featured in: Virtue Quotes

15. “An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

16. “Gratitude produced the most purely joyful moments that have been known to man.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Featured in: Happy Sunday Quotes, Gratitude Quotes, I Appreciate You Quotes, Thankful Thursday Quotes

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Featured in: Smart Quotes

18. “Humility is the mother of giants.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

19. “I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Featured in: Happy Sunday Quotes, Grateful Quotes, Appreciation Quotes, Thankful Quotes, Thankful Thursday Quotes

20. “And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Featured in: Rain Quotes

21. “Here ends another day, during which I have had eyes, ears, hands and the great world around me. Tomorrow begins another day. Why am I allowed two?”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

22. “Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

23. “If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

24. “They say travel broadens the mind, but you must have the mind.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

25. “You’ll never find the solution if you don’t see the problem.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

26. “There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

27. “The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

29. “The reason that angels fly is that they take themselves so lightly.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

30. “Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox; that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

31. “Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Featured in: Strong Quotes, Veteran's Day Quotes

32. “The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

33. “It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

34. “It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

35. “Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances that we know to be desperate.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

36. “I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a story-teller.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Featured in: Firsts Quotes, Quotes About Stories

37. “How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Featured in: Clever Quotes

38. “Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

39. “We need to be reminded more than we need to be instructed.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

40. “When belief in God becomes difficult, the tendency is to turn away from Him; but in heaven’s name to what?”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

41. “Meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain. Meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

42. “Wherever there is animal worship, there is human sacrifice.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Featured in: Sacrifice Quotes

43. “The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

44. “Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

45. “Gratitude, being nearly the greatest of human duties, is also nearly the most difficult.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

46. “With every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story which we are certain to misunderstand.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

47. “Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

48. “One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

49. “Cleanliness is not next to godliness nowadays, for cleanliness is made an essential and godliness is regarded as an offence.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

50. “The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton