Gilbert K. Chesterton
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG, better known as G. K. Chesterton, was an English writer, poet, philosopher, dramatist, journalist, orator, lay theologian, biographer, and literary and art critic. Chesterton is often referred to as the "prince of paradox." Time magazine has observed of his writing style: "Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories—first carefully turning them inside out."...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth29 May 1874
party government two
English experience indicates that when the two great political parties agree about something it is generally wrong.
book hero mean
Folk-lore means that the soul is sane, but that the universe is wild and full of marvels. Realism means that the world is dull and full of routine, but that the soul is sick and screaming. The problem of the fairy tale is: what will a healthy man do with a fantastic world? The problems of the modern novel is: what will a madman do with a dull world? In the fairy tales the cosmos goes mad; but the hero does not go mad. In the modern novels the hero is mad before the book begins, and suffers from the harsh steadiness and cruel sanity of the cosmos.
apples noses newton
If the apple hit Newton’s nose, Newton’s nose hit the apple.
christian pain truth
Christian Science … is the direct denial both of science and of Christianity, for Science rests wholly on the recognition of truth and Christianity on the recognition of pain.
christian reckless mass
I represent the jolly mass of mankind. I am the happy and reckless Christian.
facts lines mathematical
It is a mathematical fact that if a line be not perfectly directed towards a point, it will actually go further away from it as it comes nearer to it.
men people house
The best way that a man could test his readiness to encounter the common variety of mankind would be to climb down a chimney into any house at random, and get on as well as possible with the people inside. And that is essentially what each one of us did on the day that he was born.
men games dignity
Humour is meant, in a literal sense, to make game of man; that is, to dethrone him from his official dignity and hunt him like game.
passion selfishness doctrine
It was the mystical dogma of Bentham and Adam Smith and the rest, that some of the worst of human passions would turn out to be all for the best. It was the mysterious doctrine that selfishness would do the work of unselfishness.
party humor play
The Party System was founded on one national notion of fair play. It was the notion that folly and futility should be fairly divided between both sides.
power criticism speech
It is the beginning of all true criticism of our time to realize that it has really nothing to say, at the very moment when it has invented so tremendous a trumpet for saying it.
news enough
Nothing is so remote from us as the thing which is not old enough to be history and not new enough to be news.
truth men thinking
The life of a thinking man will probably be divided into two parts -- the first in which he desires to exterminate modern thinkers, and the second in which he desires to watch them exterminating each other. ... Suppose, for instance, there is an old story and a new skeptic who is skeptical of the story. We have only to wait a little while for a yet newer skeptic who is skeptical of the skeptic. He will probably find the old notion actually a help in his new notion. This process is an abstract truth applying to anything, apart from agreement or disagreement.
memories truth use
Correctitude implies nowadays a formal or fastidious use of words; and what is wanted is not so much the correct as the living use of words. It is the memory of the meaning of a word which is the life of the word.