Top 500 Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

202. “Let a man walk ten miles steadily on a hot summer’s day along a dusty English road, and he will soon discover why beer was invented.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

203. “Truth is sacred; and if you tell the truth too often nobody will believe it.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

204. “The first two facts which a healthy boy or girl feels about sex are these: first that it is beautiful and then that it is dangerous.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

206. “Surprise is the secret of joy.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

207. “Life exists for the love of music or beautiful things.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

210. “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

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

213. “Art is the signature of man.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

214. “When the chord of monotony is stretched to its tightest, it breaks with the sound of a song.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

215. “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

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

217. “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

218. “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

219. “Nine times out of ten it is the coarse word that condemns an evil, and the refined word that excuses it.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

220. “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

Featured in: Book Quotes

221. “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

222. “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

223. “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

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

225. “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

226. “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

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

230. “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

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

233. “Romance is the deepest thing in life. It is deeper than reality.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Featured in: Romance Quotes

234. “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

235. “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

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

237. “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

238. “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

239. “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

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

241. “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

Featured in: Real Quotes

242. “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

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

246. “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

247. “The difference between the poet and the mathematician is that the poet tries to get his head into the heavens while the mathematician tries to get the heavens into his head.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

250. “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