Remembering Chesterton
— Posted by John (May 26, 2006 at 3:34 pm)
For us Americans, this coming Monday, May 29th, is Memorial Day, a day when we pay special tribute to the brave men and women who have given their lives in service to our country.
May 29th is also the birthday of G. K. Chesterton.
“Who is G. K. Chesterton?” you may ask.
This excerpt from the American Chesterton Society’s website — titled, fittingly enough, “Who is this guy and why haven’t I heard of him?” is as good of an introduction as you’ll find:
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) cannot be summed up in one sentence. Nor in one paragraph. In fact, in spite of the fine biographies that have been written of him, he has never been captured between the covers of one book. But rather than waiting to separate the goats from the sheep, let’s just come right out and say it: G.K. Chesterton was the best writer of the 20th century. He said something about everything and he said it better than anybody else. But he was no mere wordsmith. He was very good at expressing himself, but more importantly, he had something very good to express. The reason he was the greatest writer of the 20th century was because he was also the greatest thinker of the 20th century.
If you’ve never read anything written by Chesterton, I envy you.
I say these words because they are the same ones Chesterton spoke to a young boy in a London train station some 100 years ago when, in the course of their converesation, the boy said that he had never read anything by Charles Dickens.
Chesterton went on to tell the boy that he envied him because of the sheer joy he would experience upon reading Dickens for the first time.
Chesterton’s wit, the clarity of his thought, and the diversity of his literary output–he wrote everything from novels to biographies, poetry to plays, studies of history to detective stories–all contributed to his unparalleled status as a writer.
Chesterton railed against many of the evils that plagued the world then, and plague the world even more so today, including sexual immorality, birth control, moral relativism, socialism, and unchecked capitalism.
We all could learn much by reading him, and enjoy ourselves in the process.
The following quotations should whet your appetite:
“What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but an absence of self-criticism.” - Sidelights on New London and Newer New York
“Among the 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 egotistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.” - A Miscellany of Men
“I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.” - Illustrated London News, 3 June 1922
“The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right.” - ILN 28 October 1922
“Do not look at the faces in the illustrated papers. Look at the faces in the street.” - ILN, 16 November 1907
“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 that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.” - Orthodoxy, 1908
“I still hold. . . that the suburbs ought to be either glorified by romance and religion or else destroyed by fire from heaven, or even by firebrands from the earth.” - The Coloured Lands
“How quickly revolutions grow old; and, worse still, respectable.” - The Listener, 6 March 1935
“He is a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of a conservative.” - Varied Types
“It is terrible to contemplete how few politicians are hanged.” - The Cleveland Press, 1 March 1921
“It is true that I am of an older fashion; much that I love has been destroyed or sent into exile.” - The Judgement of Dr. Johnson, Act III
“Love means loving the unlovable - or it is no virtue at all.” - Heretics, 1905
“Women are the only realists; their whole object in life is to pit their realism against the extravagant, excessive, and occasionally drunken idealism of men.” - A Handful of Authors
“The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.” - ILN, 16 July 1910
“Modern broad-mindedness benefits the rich; and benefits nobody else.” - “The Church of the Servile State”, A Utopia of Usurers
“Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.” - The Uses of Diversity, 1921
“Our materialistic masters could, and probably will, put Birth Control into an immediate practical programme while we are all discussing the dreadful danger of somebody else putting it into a distant Utopia.” -GK’s Weekly, 17 January 1931
“Atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas . . . for it is the assertion of a universal negative.” - “Charles II”, Twelve Types
“No sceptical philosopher can ask any questions that may not equally be asked by a tired child on a hot afternoon.” - George Bernard Shaw
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.” - What’s Wrong With The World, 1910
More quotations can be found here.
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Pansy Moss says:
Thank you for the great post on Chesterton. He is one of my all time favorite writers, people, philosphers…the list goes on.
Comment posted May 26th, 2006 at 4:39 pm
John says:
Pansy said: “Thank you for the great post on Chesterton. He is one of my all time favorite writers, people, philosphers…the list goes on.”
Pansy,
You have excellent taste.
Comment posted May 26th, 2006 at 4:59 pm
mary kay says:
I just sent Lauren a list of Fulton Sheen quotes on the last thread and was getting ready to look up some Chesterton when lo and behold I skipped ahead to the next thread and you beat me to it!
BRAVO!
MK
Comment posted May 26th, 2006 at 5:41 pm
Pansy Moss says:
I just sent Lauren a list of Fulton Sheen quotes on the last thread and was getting ready to look up some Chesterton when lo and behold I skipped ahead to the next thread and you beat me to it!
BRAVO!
I saw that list and it was awesome. I was going to ask if I can borrow the quote about three people to make love for my blog.
BTW, my AIM away message says:
“By experts in poverty I do not mean sociologists, but poor men.” - GK Chesterton, ILN, 3/25/11
Comment posted May 26th, 2006 at 6:12 pm
mary kay says:
Here’s a few more…
* “Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.” - ILN, 10/23/09
* “Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.” - ILN, 5/5/28
# “A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.” - Everlasting Man, 1925
* “Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God.” - Christendom in Dublin, 1933
# “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.” - New York Times Magazine, 2/11/23
# “If there were no God, there would be no atheists.” - Where All Roads Lead, 1922
# “The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted: precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden.” - ILN 1-3-20
“We are learning to do a great many clever things…The next great task will be to learn not to do them.- “Queen Victoria” Varied Types
# Urban Planning
“The whole structural system of the suburban civilization is based on the case for having bathrooms and the case against having babies.” -G.K.’s Weekly 7-6-29
# Reproductive Rights
“Let all the babies be born. Then let us drown those we do not like.” - Babies and Distributism, GK’s Weekly, 11/12/32
# “There are only two kinds of people, those who accept dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don’t know it.” (”The Mercy of Mr. Arnold Bennett” Fancies vs. Fads)
Comment posted May 26th, 2006 at 6:55 pm
mary kay says:
Pansy,
absolutely…they’re Fulton Sheen’s not mine…
from a book called the “Seven Words of Jesus and Mary”.
MK
Comment posted May 26th, 2006 at 6:58 pm
Sunnyday says:
What thought-provoking and insightful words, those from Chesterton. I haven’t read a single book of his. Can anyone recommend a title that would be a good start?
Comment posted May 26th, 2006 at 9:29 pm
Pansy Moss says:
Can anyone recommend a title that would be a good start?
————————————————————–
Orthodoxy
What’s Wrong With The World
Comment posted May 26th, 2006 at 10:39 pm
Sunnyday says:
Thanks, Pansy! Will check these out on my next trip to the bookstore.
This is just a side note but it occurred to me now that highly esteemed authors (particularly the ones I know who are anchored on Christian ideals) seem to use initials — G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien. I wonder if there’s a significance to that…
Comment posted May 27th, 2006 at 7:17 am
Pansy Moss says:
Did you see that Dawn Eden says that when someone recommended Chesterton to her, that was the start of her journey to become Catholic on her blog today?
Comment posted May 28th, 2006 at 9:02 am
John says:
Sunnyday said: “What thought-provoking and insightful words, those from Chesterton. I haven’t read a single book of his. Can anyone recommend a title that would be a good start?”
Sunnday,
I envy you.
Any of Chesterton’s works are a good place to start, and Pansy’s suggestions of Orthodoxy and What’s Wrong with the World are good ones, to be sure, especially seeing as they were written relatively early in his literary career.
Before diving into one of Chesterton’s books, which can be hard to understand at times–I’ve found them to be so, at least–
I would suggest starting with some of his essays. A handful of them can be found in a section titled The Essayist on the American Chesterton Society’s website.
The ACS website also has sections titled The Poet, The Artist, The Murderer[!], The Distributist, The Historian, The Critic, The Philosopher, and The Theologian, all of which contain a smattering of Chesterton’s writing in these various areas. [N. B. The Murderer is a sampling of Chesterton’s ideas about detective stories.]
I would also suggest checking out the eminently useful Bibliography for Beginners compiled by the ACS to give you a flavor of each of GKC’s books.
Comment posted May 31st, 2006 at 9:19 am
John says:
Pansy said: “Did you see that Dawn Eden says that when someone recommended Chesterton to her, that was the start of her journey to become Catholic on her blog today?”
Pansy,
Not until you mentioned it. Thanks!
Comment posted May 31st, 2006 at 9:22 am
Sunnyday says:
Okay, will check those out first, John. Thanks! I haven’t had time to drop by the bookstore but “Orthodoxy” is on my to-buy list =)
I’ll also scout around for a Chesterton Society in my country. Haven’t heard of one, and I’ve been thinking of joining the Phil. Tolkien Society…until you guys started delving on Chesteron here. Maybe Tolkien will take a back seat for now if I do find a group that focuses on Chesterton and his works =)
Comment posted May 31st, 2006 at 11:03 pm
Michael says:
I’ll admit, all I have read from Chesterton so far is “The Ball and the Cross,” one of his lesser known works. But, it contains one of my favorite quotes:
“Here, after twenty lone years of useless toil, he had his reward. … He bounded to his feet like a boy; he saw a new youth opening before him. And as not unfrequently happens to middle-aged gentlemen when they see a new youth opening before them, he found himself in the presence of the police.”
Comment posted June 5th, 2006 at 3:18 pm