Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes
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351. “Whatever the word “great” means, Dickens was what it means.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

353. “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

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

355. “Nothing is certain by uncertainty.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

356. “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

357. “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

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

359. “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

360. “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

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

362. “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

363. “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

364. “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

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

366. “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

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

368. “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

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

370. “There are no new ideas.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

372. “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

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

375. “The secularists have not wrecked divine things; but the secularists have wrecked secular things, if that is any comfort to them. The Titans did not scale heaven; but they laid waste the world.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

376. “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

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

379. “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

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

382. “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

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

— 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. “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

386. “The books that influence the world are those that it has not read.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

389. “A great city is the place to escape the true drama of provincial life, and find solace in fantasy.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

390. “Against a dark sky all flowers look like fireworks. There is something strange about them, at once vivid and secret, like flowers traced in fire in the phantasmal garden of a witch.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

392. “We all feel the riddle of the earth without anyone to point it out. The mystery of life is the plainest part of it. The clouds and curtains of darkness, the confounding vapors, these are the daily weather of this world.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

393. “Ten thousand women marched through the streets shouting, ‘We will not be dictated to,’ and went off and became stenographers.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

394. “Men rush towards complexity, but they yearn towards simplicity. They try to be kings; but they dream of being shepherds.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

396. “Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

397. “But there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

398. “Man is not merely an evolution but rather a revolution.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

399. “I have little doubt that when St. George had killed the dragon he was heartily afraid of the princess.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

400. “The first fact about the celebration of a birthday is that it is a way of affirming defiantly, and even flamboyantly, that it is a good thing to be alive.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton