Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936) was a prolific English essayist, novelist, journalist, and critic. He devoted his extraordinary intellect and creative power to the reform of the English government and society.
Chesterton was born in London. His career began when he verbalized his first story to his aunt Rose at the age of three. He experimented in the occult as a young man, returned to the Church of England, and converted to Catholicism later in life. His thoughts on religion influenced much of his writing.
Chesterton was also amazingly prolific—he wrote fast and barely edited what he wrote. He considered himself largely a journalist, and he wrote 4,000 newspaper essays; he also wrote some 80 books (covering fiction, criticism, literary biography, and theology) as well as several hundred poems, 200 short stories, and many plays. He made his points with wit and paradox, his vast body of work contains a plethora of quotable material.
Chesterton is best known for his stories about Father Brown, a crime-solving Roman Catholic priest who seems awkward and inept—he regularly misplaces his umbrella, falls asleep during police interrogations—but knows more about crime than the criminals. Chesterton got the idea from observing Catholic priests, who listen to confessions all day long but know more about degradation and corruption than do anyone else in society.
Chesterton novels include The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904,) a political satire that many readers consider his most entertaining work. The Man Who Was Thursday (1908,) widely considered his best fictional work, is presented as a detective story but its surrealistic turns and unworldly characters turn it into a metaphysical thriller of Christian allegory.
Chesterton’s two greatest Christian apologetics were Orthodoxy (1908) and The Everlasting Man (1925;) the latter contributed to the British intellectual C. S. Lewis’s conversion from atheism to Christianity.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by G. K. Chesterton
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.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: People
Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Mind, Intelligence
Love means to love that which is unlovable, or it is no virtue at all.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Equality, Love, Virtue, Now
Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Science
Woe unto them that are tired of everything, for everything will certainly be tired of them.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Habits
The golden age only comes to men when they have forgotten gold.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Gold
A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Religion
Among the very rich you will never find a really generous man, even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egoistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Riches, Wealth
The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Innocence
We are all in the same boat in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Loyalty
People in high life are hardened to the wants and distresses of mankind as surgeons are to their bodily pains.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Understanding
It matters very little whether a man is discontented in the name of pessimism or progress, if his discontent does in fact paralyse his power of appreciating what he has got.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Gratitude, Blessings, Appreciation
If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Perfection, Doing
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.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Ideals, America, Americans
The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Cheating, Business, Terrorism
Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf ;is better than a whole loaf.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Compromise
Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Education
Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.
—G. K. Chesterton
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes—our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking around.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Miscellaneous, Tradition
There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Heart, Beauty, Eyes
Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Helpfulness, Difficulties, Adversity
Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Education
In matters of truth the fact that you don’t want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Publishers, Books, Publishing
How much larger your life would be if your self could be smaller in it.
—G. K. Chesterton
Children feel the whiteness of the lily with a graphic and passionate clearness which we cannot give them at all. The only thing we can give them is information-the information that if you break the lily in two it won’t grow again.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Children
We are always giving foreign names to very native things. If there is a thing that reeks of the glorious tradition of the old English tavern, it is toasted cheese. But for some wild reason we call it Welsh rarebit. I believe that what we call Irish stew might more properly be called English stew, and that it is not particularly familiar in Ireland.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Food
The timidity of the child or the savage is entirely reasonable; they are alarmed at this world, because this world is a very alarming place. They dislike being alone because it is verily and indeed an awful idea to be alone. Barbarians fear the unknown for the same reason that Agnostics worship it—because it is a fact.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Fear
No man knows he is young while he is young.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Time, Youth
It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.
—G. K. Chesterton
The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Taste, Appreciation, Style
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