G. K. Chesterton

“{{gutenberg author|id=G._K._Chesterton|name=G. K. Chesterton}}”

“G. K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense Produced by EWTN - Real Audio Archives include 28 Episodes with an overview and quotes of Chesterton.”

“The Complete "Father Brown" online at the University of Adelaide”

“An extensive collection of eText links”

“The American Chesterton Society”

“I have the greatest possible admiration for “Tremendous Trifles” and the other fairy tales – Heavens! how I can see Mr. Chesterton's beaming face crying happily, “But that’s just it! Life is a fairy tale!” Heavens! – but I believe his view of life to be based on a misconception. To put it in a theological way, he denies that God made the brain as well as the heart. He despises wisdom...Like all sentimentalists he is cruel.”

“The meeting between Chesterton and Il Duce occurred in 1929, ten years before the war, at a time when, whatever his other faults, Mussolini had reintroduced a mark spirit of optimism and freshness to an Italy that had formerly been pessimistic and stagnant. Throughout the 1920s, Chesterton thought he saw in the Italian leader qualities that might have offset certain evils in Britain. It is important to keep in mind that whatever the misreadings of fascism, Chesterton always had some quite specific British problem in view when he praises Mussolini.”

“To speak of ideals and their significance as goals to be reached for is to put one's finger on an ever-recurring theme in Chesterton's productive life, the indignant rejection of pessimism in any and all of its forms. This is not to say that he was unaware that there is evil — a great deal of it — in this world. His life was one continuous campaign against the evils he perceived, one of the chief of which was the denial that there is good in the world, the denial that life is basically good.”

“Several books I purchased on my trip, among them G. K. Chesterton's The Ballad of the White Horse. Ever read it? It's great.”

“There is great poetry being written now. G.K. Chesterton, for instance.”

“The insistence of the Christian doctrine on man's limited condition was somehow enough of a philosophy to allow its adherents a very deep insight into the essential inhumanity of all those modern attempts – psychological, technical, biological – to change man into the monster of superman. They realized that a pursuit of happiness which actually means to wipe away all tears will pretty quickly end by wiping out all laughter. It was again Christianity which taught them that nothing human can exist beyond tears and laughter, except the silence of despair.”

“Moral issues are always terribly complex for someone without principles.”

“A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been the boy.”

“A man knocking on the door of a brothel is looking for God.”

“Q: What's wrong with the world? A: I am.”

“Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up.”

“A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things but cannot receive great ones.”

“When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing — they believe in anything.”

“An open mind is really a mark of foolishness, like an open mouth. Mouths and minds were made to shut; they were made to open only in order to shut.”

“The poor object to being governed badly, while the rich object to being governed at all.”