Top 500 Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “A feminist is someone who loathes being a woman and who dislikes the chief feminine characteristics.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

352. “The Devil’s walking parody; On all four-footed things.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

353. “A faith is that which is able to survive a mood.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

354. “In the modern conflict between the Smile and the Laugh, I am all in favor of laughing. The recent stage of culture and criticism might very well be summed up as the men who smile criticizing the men who laugh.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

355. “The poetry of art is in beholding the single tower; the poetry of nature in seeing the single tree; the poetry of love in following the single woman; the poetry of religion in worshipping the single star.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

356. “The word ‘good’ has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

357. “A tragedy means always a mans struggle with that which is stronger than man.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

358. “We are Christians and Catholics not because we worship a key, but because we have passed a door; and felt the wind that is the trumpet of liberty blow over the land of the living.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

359. “You cannot grow a beard in a moment of passion.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

360. “Do not look at the faces in the illustrated papers. Look at the faces in the street.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

361. “I have investigated the dust-heaps of humanity, and found a treasure in all of them. I have found that humanity is not incidentally engaged, but eternally and systematically engaged, in throwing gold into the gutter and diamonds into the sea.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

362. “Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

363. “Nothing is certain by uncertainty.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

364. “Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

365. “We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

366. “A crown of roses is also a crown of thorns.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

367. “Whatever the word “great” means, Dickens was what it means.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

368. “Americans are a very backward people, with all the real virtues of a backward people; the patriarchal simplicity and human dignity of a democracy, and a respect for labor uncorrupted by cynicism.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

369. “Individually, men may present a more or less rational appearance, eating, sleeping, and scheming. But humanity a a whole is changeful, mystical, fickle, delightful. Men are men, but Man is a woman.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

370. “A man must be prepared not only to be a martyr, but to be a fool. It is absurd to say that a man is ready to toil and die for his convictions if he is not even ready to wear a wreathe around his head for them.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

371. “I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. There are a great many human souls whom we should accept more kindly, and even appreciate more clearly, if we simply thought of them as people in a story.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

372. “The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really this proposition: that nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover she is a step-mother.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

373. “Saint George he was for England, And before he killed the dragon he drank a pint of English ale out of an English flagon.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

374. “There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

375. “No man can break any of the Ten Commandments. He can only break himself against them.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

376. “Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

377. “There are no new ideas.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

378. “Life is indeed terribly complicated – to a man who has lost his principles.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

379. “Earnest Freethinkers need not worry themselves so much about the persecutions of the past. Before the Liberal idea is dead or triumphant we shall see wars and persecutions the like of which the world has never seen.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

380. “Contemporary society has become dry, not for lack of wonders but for lack of wonder.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

381. “The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children’s games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

382. “Why be something to everybody when you can be everything to somebody?”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

383. “Poets do not go mad, but chess players do.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

384. “Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

385. “The Church is a house with a hundred gates: and no two men enter at exactly the same angle.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

386. “No sceptical philosopher can ask any questions that may not equally be asked by a tired child on a hot afternoon.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

387. “I still think sincere pessimism the unpardonable sin.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

388. “We are like the penny, because we have the image of the king stamped on us, the divine king.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

389. “The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

390. “All my authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

391. “What we all dread most is a maze with no centre.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

392. “Stick to the man who looks out of the window and tries to understand the world. Keep clear of the man who looks in at the window and tries to understand you.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

393. “One can hardly think too little of one’s self. One can hardly think too much of one’s soul.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

394. “A great man is not a man so strong that he feels less than other men; he is a man so strong that he feels more.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

395. “The real objection to modernism is simply that it is a form of snobbishness. It is an attempt to crush a rational opponent not by reason, but by some mystery of superiority, by hinting that one is specially up to date or particularly “in the know.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

396. “Adventure is the champagne of life.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

397. “The Special mark of the modern world is not that it is skeptical, but that it is dogmatic without knowing it. It says, in mockery of old devotees, that they believed without knowing why they believed. But the moderns believe without knowing what they believe – and without even knowing that they do believe it. Their freedom consists in first freely assuming a creed, and then freely forgetting that they are assuming it.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

398. “Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

399. “A change of opinions is almost unknown in an elderly military man.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

400. “The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton