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
A dead thing goes with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.
—G. K. Chesterton
Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long as you have one good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Wives, Women, Marriage
The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Love, Appreciation, Feelings, Strength, Blessings, Gratitude
I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Fate, Action, Performance
We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy one means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.
—G. K. Chesterton
Fairy tales, are more than true. Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be defeated.
—G. K. Chesterton
There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Greatness, Greatness & Great Things
Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Art, Artists
It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Identifying Problems, Perspective
Life exists for the love of music or beautiful things.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Goals, Aspirations
To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Feelings, Hope, Forgiveness
The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Heaven, Happiness, Goals, Aspirations
The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable one. The trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: World
Acceptance is the truest kinship with humanity.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Acceptance
It is always the secure who are humble.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Humility
Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Beliefs
An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Action, Attitude
He who lives in the future lives in a featureless blank; he lives in impersonality; he lives in Nirvana. The past is democratic, because it is a people. The future is despotic, because it is a caprice. Every man is alone in his prediction, just as each man is alone in a dream.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Tomorrow, The Future
I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Gratitude
There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Imagination
Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Difficulties, Helpfulness, Adversity
Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Authors & Writing, Literature, Necessity, Luxury
How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Thought, Thoughts
Love means to love that which is unlovable, or it is no virtue at all.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Love, Equality, Virtue
People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: One liners, Argument
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.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Growth
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.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Happiness, Inner-child
We all have a little weakness, which is very natural but rather misleading, for supposing that this epoch must be the end of the world because it will be the end of us. How future generations will get on without us is indeed, when we come to think of it, quite a puzzle. But I suppose they will get on somehow, and may possibly venture to revise our judgments as we have revised earlier judgments
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Proverbs, Common Sense
If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Perfection, Doing
One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.
—G. K. Chesterton
Topics: Self-Knowledge, Self-Discovery, Awareness, Beginning, Proverbs, Knowledge
The way to love anything, is to realize it may be lost.
—G. K. Chesterton
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