Top 500 Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

302. “Real development is not leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them, as from a root.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

304. “If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

305. “Sticking to one woman is a small price to pay for so much as having seen one woman.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

306. “Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

307. “Where does a wise man kick a pebble? On the beach. Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

309. “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

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

311. “Because our expression is imperfect we need friendship to fill up the imperfections.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

312. “Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad, but chess players do.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

313. “What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

314. “Idolatry is when you worship what you should use, and use what you should worship.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

315. “By experts in poverty I do not mean sociologists, but poor men.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

316. “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

317. “Gluttony is a great fault; but we do not necessarily dislike a glutton. We only dislike the glutton when he becomes a gourmet-that is, we only dislike him when he not only wants the best for himself, but knows what is best for other people.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

318. “In a world where everything is ridiculous, nothing can be ridiculed. You cannot unmask a mask.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

319. “If the world becomes pagan and perishes, the last man left alive would do well to quote the Iliad and die.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

320. “Evil comes at leisure like the disease. Good comes in a hurry like the doctor.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

321. “At the back of our brains is a blaze of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life is to dig for this sunrise of wonder.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

322. “And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine, “I don’t care where the water goes if it doesn’t get into the wine.””

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

323. “If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

324. “If there is one thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals it is the modern strengthening of minor morals.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

325. “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.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

326. “Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

327. “The lunatic is the man who lives in a small world but thinks it is a large one; he is the man who lives in a tenth of the truth, and thinks it is the whole. The madman cannot conceive any cosmos outside a certain tale or conspiracy or vision.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

328. “Democracy is reproached with saying that the majority is always right. But progress says that the minority is always right.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

329. “The Mass is very long and tiresome unless one loves God.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

330. “Progress is a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

331. “You can’t have the family farm without the family.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

332. “A man imagines a happy marriage as a marriage of love; even if he makes fun of marriages that are without love, or feels sorry for lovers who are without marriage.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

333. “Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

334. “I am not fighting a hopeless fight. People who have fought in real fights don’t, as a rule.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

335. “Daybreak is a never-ending glory; getting out of bed is a never ending nuisance.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

336. “A good man’s work is effected by doing what he does, a woman’s by being what she is.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

337. “The real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

338. “All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

339. “My attitude toward progress has passed from antagonism to boredom. I have long ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

340. “It’s not the world that’s got so much worse but the news coverage that’s got so much better.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

341. “Aristocracy: government by the badly educated.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

342. “The word good has many meanings...”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

343. “I may not practice what I preach but God forbid I should preach what I practice.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

344. “If you happen to read fairy tales, you will observe that one idea runs from one end of them to the other – the idea that peace and happiness can only exist on some condition. This idea, which is the core of ethics, is the core of the nursery-tales.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

345. “A man looking at a hippopotamus may sometimes be tempted to regard a hippopotamus as an enormous mistake; but he is also bound to confess that a fortunate inferiority prevents him personally from making such mistakes.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

346. “People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

347. “Classic literature is still something that hangs in the air like a song.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

348. “Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. Unless a man starts on the strange assumption that he has never existed before, it is quite certain that he will never exist afterwards.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

349. “One elephant having a trunk was odd; but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

350. “The evolutionists seem to know everything about the missing link except the fact that it is missing.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton