Top 500 Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “All but the hard hearted man must be torn with pity for this pathetic dilemma of the rich man, who has to keep the poor man just stout enough to do the work and just thin enough to have to do it.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

202. “The Reformer is always right about what’s wrong. However, he’s often wrong about what is right.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

203. “In the struggle for existence, it is only on those who hang on for ten minutes after all is hopeless, that hope begins to dawn.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

204. “Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

205. “You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

206. “I would give a woman not more rights, but more privileges. Instead of sending her to seek such freedom as notoriously prevails in banks and factories, I would design specially a house in which she can be free.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

207. “He who has no sympathy with myths has no sympathy with men.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

208. “The great majority of people will go on observing forms that cannot be explained; they will keep Christmas Day with Christmas gifts and Christmas benedictions; they will continue to do it; and some day suddenly wake up and discover why.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

209. “I never could see anything wrong in sensationalism; and I am sure our society is suffering more from secrecy than from flamboyant revelations.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

210. “Nothing taken for granted; everything received with gratitude; everything passed on with grace.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

211. “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.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

212. “There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

213. “Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

214. “To be simple is the best thing in the world; to be modest is the next best thing. I am not sure about being quiet.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

215. “Unless a man becomes the enemy of an evil, he will not even become its slave but rather its champion.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

216. “The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

217. “Time and again, the Faith has to all appearances gone to the dogs. But each time, it was the dog that died.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

218. “The decay of society is praised by artists as the decay of a corpse is praised by worms.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

219. “War is not the best way of settling differences; it is the only way of preventing their being settled for you.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

220. “Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

221. “We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbour.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

222. “Government has become ungovernable; that is, it cannot leave off governing. Law has become lawless; that is, it cannot see where laws should stop. The chief feature of our time is the meekness of the mob and the madness of the government.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

223. “If men will not be governed by the Ten Commandments, they shall be governed by the ten thousand commandments.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

224. “They have invented a phrase, a phrase that is a black and white contradiction in two words – ‘free-love’ – as if a lover ever had been, or ever could be, free.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

225. “The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

226. “There are no new lies, no new heresies. Man is simply not that creative.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

227. “Those who leave the tradition of truth do not escape into something which we call Freedom. They only escape into something else, which we call Fashion.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

228. “Making the landlord and the tenant the same person has certain advantages, as that the tenant pays no rent, while the landlord does a little work.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

229. “I am more than a devil; I am a man. I can do the one thing which Satan himself cannot do – I can die.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

230. “Surprise is the secret of joy.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

231. “I am a journalist and have no earthly motives except curiosity and personal vanity.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

232. “There are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

233. “Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

234. “The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

235. “Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

236. “One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

237. “Self-denial is the test and definition of self-government.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

238. “Theology is simply that part of religion that requires brains.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

239. “Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

240. “But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet. Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

241. “To the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sun is really a sun; to the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sea is really a sea.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

242. “Thinking means connecting things, and stops if they cannot be connected.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

243. “Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

244. “Agnostic is the Greek word, for the Latin word, for ignorant.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

245. “And though St. John saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

246. “We are learning to do a great many clever things. The next great task will be to learn not to do them.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

247. “In prosperity, our friends know us. In adversity, we know our friends.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

248. “Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

249. “When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

250. “All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton