G. K. Chesterton

G. K.
Chesterton
the feeling that every ower and leaf has just uttered
something stupendously direct and important, and
that we have by a prodigy of imbecility not heard or
understood it. There is a certain poetic value, and
that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed
the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not
only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic
ignorance.
Robert Browning. (1903)
The truth is that Tolstoy, with his immense genius,
with his colossal faith, with his vast fearlessness and
vast knowledge of life, is decient in one faculty and
one faculty alone. He is not a mystic; and therefore he has a tendency to go mad. Men talk of the
extravagances and frenzies that have been produced
by mysticism; they are a mere drop in the bucket. In
the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism
has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them
mad was logic. ...The only thing that has kept the
race of men from the mad extremes of the convent and the pirate-galley, the night-club and the
lethal chamber, has been mysticism the belief
that logic is misleading, and that things are not
what they seem.
When some English moralists write about the importance of having character, they appear to mean only the importance of having
a dull character.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (29 May 1874 14 June

1936) was a British writer whose prolic and diverse output included works of philosophy, ontology, poetry, play
writing, journalism, public lecturing and debating, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics,
and ction, including fantasy and detective ction. He
has been called the prince of paradox".
Tolstoy (1903)
See also:
Heretics (1905)
Orthodoxy (1908)
The Man Who Was Thursday
(1908)
Whats Wrong with the World
(1910)
The Ballad of the White Horse
(1911)
The Everlasting Man (1925)
Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who

appeal to the head rather than the heart, however
pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence.
We speak of 'touching' a mans heart, but we can do
nothing to his head but hit it.
Twelve Types (1903) Charles II
The center of every mans existence is a dream.
Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like a toothache or a twisted ankle. That these
brutal forces always besiege and often capture the
citadel does not prove that they are the citadel.
Quotes
Twelve Types (1903) Sir Walter Scott
Impartiality is a pompous name for indierence,

which is an elegant name for ignorance.
The simplication of anything is always sensational.
The Speaker (15 December 1900)
Varied Types (1903)
One of the deepest and strangest of all human moods

is the mood which will suddenly strike us perhaps
in a garden at night, or deep in sloping meadows,
He is only a very shallow critic who cannot see an

eternal rebel in the heart of the Conservative.
1
QUOTES
Impartiality is a pompous name for indierence, which is an elegant name for ignorance.
There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this

sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is
beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic
ignorance.
courage to say, and that is a truism.

[http://books.google.com/books?id=
PLpLAAAAMAAJ&q=\char"0022\
relax{}There+is+only+one+thing+that+
it+requires+real+courage+to+say+and+
that+is+a+truism\char"0022\relax{}&pg=
PA17#v=onepage G.F. Watts] (1904)
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.
Varied Types (1903)

There is only one thing that it requires real
Bosh, he said, On what else is the whole world

run but immediate impressions? What is more practical? My friend, the philosophy of this world may
be founded on facts, but its business is run on spiritual impressions and atmospheres.
The Club of Queer Trades (1905) Ch. 2 The
The center of every mans existence is a dream.

Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is
shown in levity.
The Club of Queer Trades (1905) Ch. 4 Speculation of the House Agent
Men always talk about the most important things to
total strangers. It is because in the total stranger we
perceive man himself; the image of God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of the
wisdom of a moustache.
The philosophy of this world may be founded on facts, but its
business is run on spiritual impressions and atmospheres.
Briey, you can only nd truth with logic if you have already
found truth without it.
Painful Fall of a Great Reputation

Truth must of necessity be stranger than ction
for ction is the creation of the human mind, and
therefore is congenial to it.
[http://books.google.com/books?id=
mjcdk4InFzoC&q=\char"0022\relax{}Men+
always+talk+about+the+most+important+
things+to+total+strangers+it+is+because+
in+the+total+stranger+we+perceive+
man+himself+the+image+of+God+is+
not+disguised+by+resemblances+to+an+
uncle+or+doubts+of+the+wisdom+of+a+
moustache\char"0022\relax{}&pg=PT93#
v=onepage The Club of Queer Trades] (1905)
Ch. 5 The Noticeable Conduct of Professor
Chadd
Earnest Freethinkers need not worry themselves so
much about the persecutions of the past. Before
the Liberal idea is dead or triumphant we shall see
wars and persecutions the like of which the world
has never seen.
Daily News (18 February 1905)
Briey, you can only nd truth with logic if you
have already found truth without it.
Daily News (25 February 1905)
QUOTES
The riddle of life is simply this. For some mad

reason in this mad world of ours, the things
which men dier about most are exactly the
things about which they must be got to agree.
Men can agree on the fact that the earth goes
round the sun. But then it does not matter a
dump whether the earth goes around the sun
or the Pleiades. But men cannot agree about
morals: sex, property, individual rights, xity
and contracts, patriotism, suicide, public habits
of health these are exactly the things that men
tend to ght about. And these are exactly the
things that must be settled somehow on strict
principles. Study each of them, and you will nd
each of them works back certainly to a philosophy, probably to a religion.
According to Larry Azar (Evolution and
Other Fairy Tales, AuthorHouse, 2005, p.
470), Chesterton made this statement on 16
March 1907
When people impute special vices to the Christian
Church, they seem entirely to forget that the world
(which is the only other thing there is) has these vices
much more. The Church has been cruel; but the
world has been much more cruel. The Church has
plotted; but the world has plotted much more. The Men do not dier much about what things they will call evils; they
Church has been superstitious; but it has never been dier enormously about what evils they will call excusable.
so superstitious as the world is when left to itself.
Illustrated London News (14 December 1907)
The riddles of God are more satisfying than the
solutions of man.
The Book of Job: An introduction (1907)
When learned men begin to use their reason, then I
generally discover that they haven't got any.
Illustrated London News (7 November 1908)
A man must be orthodox upon most things, or

he will never even have time to preach his own
heresy.
George Bernard Shaw (1909)
We have passed the age of the demagogue, the man
who has little to say and says it loud. We have
come to the age of the mystagogue or don, the man
who has nothing to say, but says it softly and impressively in an indistinct whisper.
George Bernard Shaw (1909)
For my friend said that he opened his intellect as

the sun opens the fans of a palm tree, opening for
openings sake, opening innitely for ever. But I
said that I opened my intellect as I opened my
mouth, in order to shut it again on something
solid. I was doing it at the moment. And as I truly
pointed out, it would look uncommonly silly if I went
on opening my mouth innitely, for ever and ever.
Tremendous Tries (1909)
Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I
am informed, get up the night before.
Tremendous Tries (1909)
Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in
children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales
do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly;
that is in the child already, because it is in the world
already. Fairy tales do not give the child his rst
idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is
his rst clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey.
The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since
he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides
for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. Exactly
what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for
5
Paraphrased variant: Fairytales dont tell children that dragons exist. Children already know
that dragons exist. Fairytales tell children that
dragons can be killed.
Appeared in Criminal Minds 2007
episode Seven Seconds (IMDB quote
entry)
Men do not dier much about what things they
will call evils; they dier enormously about what
evils they will call excusable.
Illustrated London News (23 October 1909)
The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an
imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George
to kill the dragon.
a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that
there is something in the universe more mystical
than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.
I swear to you, then, said MacIan, after a pause.

I swear to you that nothing shall come between us.
I swear to you that nothing shall be in my heart or
in my head till our swords clash together. I swear
it by the God you have denied, by the Blessed Lady
you have blasphemed; I swear it by the seven swords
in her heart. I swear it by the Holy Island where
my fathers are, by the honour of my mother, by the
secret of my people, and by the chalice of the Blood
of God.
The atheist drew up his head. And I, he said, give
my word.
The Ball and the Cross (1909), part II: The
Religion of the Stipendiary Magistrate, last
paragraphs
Tremendous Tries (1909), XVII: The Red

Angel
Paraphrased Variant: Fairy tales are more
than true not because they tell us dragons
exist, but because they tell us dragons can be
beaten.
The earliest known attribution of this was
an epigraph in Coraline (2004) by Neil
Gaiman; when questioned on this at his
ocial Tumblr account, Gaiman admitted to misquoting Chesterton: Its my
fault. When I started writing Coraline, I
wrote my version of the quote in Tremendous Tries, meaning to go back later and
nd the actual quote, as I didnt own the
book, and this was before the Internet.
And then ten years went by before I nished the book, and in the meantime I had
completely forgotten that the Chesterton
quote was mine and not his.
Im perfectly happy for anyone to attribute it to either of us. The sentiment Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
is his, the phrasing is mine.
QUOTES
It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions. We announce
on aring posters that a man has fallen o a scaffolding. We do not announce on aring posters that
a man has not fallen o a scaolding. Yet this latter fact is fundamentally more exciting, as indicating that that moving tower of terror and mystery, a
man, is still abroad upon the earth. That the man
has not fallen o a scaolding is really more sensational; and it is also some thousand times more
common. But journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus to insist upon the permanent miracles.
Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their
posters, Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe, or Mr.
Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet. They cannot
announce the happiness of mankind at all. They
cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen,
or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complex picture they give of
life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual. However democratic they
may be, they are only concerned with the minority.
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
The Ball and the Cross, part IV: A Discussion

at Dawn, 2nd paragraph
Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of

Charles Dickens Chapter III Pickwick Papers (1911)
The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to

love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.
Illustrated London News (16 July 1910)
I think that if they gave me leave, Within the world
to stand, I would be good through all the day I spent
in fairyland. They should not hear a word from me,
Of selshness or scorn, If only I could nd the door,
If only I were born.
By the Babe Unborn poem, Delphi Works of
G. K. Chesterton (Illustrated)[1]
Neither reason nor faith will ever die; for men
would die if deprived of either. The wildest mystic uses his reason at some stage; if it be only
by reasoning against reason. The most incisive
sceptic has dogmas of his own; though when he
is a very incisive sceptic, he has often forgotten
what they are. Faith and reason are in this sense
co-eternal; but as the words are popularly used,
as loose labels for particular periods, the one is
now almost as remote as the other. What was
called the Age of Reason has vanished as completely as what are called the Ages of Faith.
Anti-Religious Thought In The Eighteenth Century; rst published in An Outline of Christianity : The Story of our Civilization, Vol.
IV, Christianity and Modern Thought (1926)
Alarms and Discursions (1910), 'Cheese,' p.

70
But whenever one meets modern thinkers (as one
often does) progressing toward a madhouse, one always nds, on inquiry, that they have just had a
splendid escape from another madhouse. Thus, hundreds of people become Socialists, not because they
have tried Socialism and found it nice, but because
they have tried Individualism and found it particularly nasty.
Alarms and Discursions (1910), 'The New
House,' pp. 161-162
The whole dierence between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only
be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created
is loved before it exists, as the mother can love the
unborn child.
Either criticism is no good at all (a very defensible

position) or else criticism means saying about an author the very things that would have made him jump
out of his boots.
Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of
Charles Dickens Chapter VI Old Curiosity
Shop (1911)
As for science and religion, the known and admitted facts are few and plain enough. All that the parsons say is unproved. All that the doctors say is disproved. Thats the only dierence between science
and religion theres ever been, or will be.
Michael Moon in Manalive (1912)
The academic mind reects innity, and is full of
light by the simple process of being shallow and
standing still.
Inglewood in Manalive (1912)
Among the rich you will never nd 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 (1912)
7
Illustrated London News (6 April 1918)
Prince, Bayard would have smashed his sword
To see the sort of knights you dub-Is that the last of them O Lord
Will someone take me to a pub?
A Ballade Of An Anti-puritan in The Book
of Humorous Verse (1920) edited Carolyn
Wells, p. 338
There are two ways of dealing with nonsense in this world...
The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.

The Flying Inn (1914)
I am not ghting a hopeless ght. People who have
fought in real ghts don't, as a rule.
Patrick Dalroy in The Flying Inn (1914), p 295
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same
as to be right in doing it.
A Short History of England (1917)
All government is an ugly necessity.
A Short History of England (1917)
A change of opinions is almost unknown in an elderly military man.
A Utopia of Usurers (1917)
There is in Islam a paradox which is perhaps a permanent menace. The great creed born in the desert
creates a kind of ecstasy out of the very emptiness
of its own land, and even, one may say, out of the
emptiness of its own theology. [...] A void is made
in the heart of Islam which has to be lled up again
and again by a mere repetition of the revolution that
founded it. There are no sacraments ; the only thing
that can happen is a sort of apocalypse, as unique as
the end of the world ; so the apocalypse can only be
repeated and the world end again and again. There
are no priests ; and yet this equality can only breed a
multitude of lawless prophets almost as numerous as
priests. The very dogma that there is only one Mahomet produces an endless procession of Mahomets.
Lord Kitchener (1917), pp. 78
When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is
in oce he is an expert on the obstacles to it.
A mystic is a man who separates heaven and

earth even if he enjoys them both.
William Blake (1920)
Christendom might quite reasonably have been
alarmed if it had not been attacked. But as a matter of history it had been attacked. The Crusader
would have been quite justied in suspecting the
Moslem even if the Moslem had merely been a new
stranger; but as a matter of history he was already
an old enemy. The critic of the Crusade talks as if
it had sought out some inoensive tribe or temple
in the interior of Thibet, which was never discovered until it was invaded. They seem entirely to forget that long before the Crusaders had dreamed of
riding to Jerusalem, the Moslems had almost ridden
into Paris. They seem to forget that if the Crusaders nearly conquered Palestine, it was but a
return upon the Moslems who had nearly conquered Europe.
The Meaning of The Crusade. (1920)
It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are
hanged.
The Cleveland Press (1 March 1921)
There are two ways of dealing with nonsense in
this world. One way is to put nonsense in the
right place; as when people put nonsense into
nursery rhymes. The other is to put nonsense
in the wrong place; as when they put it into educational addresses, psychological criticisms, and
complaints against nursery rhymes or other normal amusements of mankind.
Child Psychology and Nonsense (15 October
1921)
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.
QUOTES
ple 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)
Atheism is, I suppose, the supreme example of a
simple faith. The man says there is no God; if he
really says it in his heart, he is a certain sort of man
so designated in Scripture [i. e. a fool, Ps 53:2].
But, anyhow, when he has said it, he has said it;
and there seems to be no more to be said. The conversation seems likely to languish. The truth is that
the atmosphere of excitement, by which the atheist lived, was an atmosphere of thrilled and shuddering theism, and not of atheism at all; it was an
atmosphere of deance and not of denial. Irreverence is a very servile parasite of reverence; and
has starved with its starving lord. After this rst
fuss about the merely aesthetic eect of blasphemy,
the whole thing vanishes into its own void. If there
were not God, there would be no atheists.
Where All Roads Lead (1922); this is often
misquoted as "If there were no God, there
would be no atheists."
The whole modern world has divided itself into
Conservatives and Progressives. The business of
Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The
business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes
from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires
them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine.
Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes
instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the
snob. This is called the balance, or mutual check, in
our Constitution.
Illustrated London News (1924)
These are the days when the Christian is expected to
praise every creed except his own.
The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives
and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the
mistakes from being corrected.
I believe what really happens in history is this:

the old man is always wrong; and the young peo-
Illustrated London News (11 August 1928)

The full potentialities of human fury cannot be
reached until a friend of both parties tactfully intervenes.
"The Skeptic as a Critic, The Forum
(February 1929)
9
Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they
become fashions.
There is something to be said for every error;
but, whatever may be said for it, the most important thing to be said about it is that it is erroneous.
The Illustrated London News (25 April 1931)
The modern world seems to have no notion of preserving dierent things side by side, of allowing its
proper and proportionate place to each, of saving the
whole varied heritage of culture. It has no notion
except that of simplifying something by destroying
nearly everything.
Half the trouble about the modern man is that he is

educated to understand foreign languages and misunderstand foreigners.
The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton (1936)
For children are innocent and love justice, while
most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.
The Coloured Lands (1938)
A man must love a thing very much if he not only
practices it without any hope of fame and money, but
even practices it without any hope of doing it well.
As quoted in Mackays The Harvest of a
Quiet Eye, A Selection of Scientic Quotations
(1977), p. 34
Holding on to Romanticism in The Illustrated London News (2 May 1931)

What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but absence of self-criticism.
On Bright Old Things and Other Things
in Sidelights on New London and Newer New
York : And Other Essays (1932)
Plato was right, but not quite right.
The Dumb Ox (1934)
The Church never said that wrongs could not or
should not be righted; or that commonwealths could
not or should not be made happier; or that it was
not worth while to help them in secular and material things; or that it is not a good thing if manners become milder, or comforts more common, or The poor object to being governed badly, while the rich object to
cruelties more rare. But she did say that we must being governed at all.
not count on the certainty even of comforts becoming more common or cruelties more rare; as if this
Never invoke the gods unless you really want
were an inevitable social trend towards a sinless huthem to appear. It annoys them very much.
manity; instead of being as it was a mood of man,
As quoted in The Sleep of Trees (1980) by
and perhaps a better mood, possibly to be followed
Jane Yolen, in Tales of Wonder (1983) by Jane
by a worse one. We must not hate humanity, or
Yolen,
p. 33
despise humanity, or refuse to help humanity;
but we must not trust humanity; in the sense of
Without education, we are in a horrible and
trusting a trend in human nature which cannot
deadly danger of taking educated people seriturn back to bad things.
ously.
My Six Conversions, II : When the World
Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton : The IlTurned Back in The Wells and the Shallows
lustrated London News, 1905-1907 (1986), p.
(1935)
71
It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that
they can't see the problem.
The Point of a Pin in The Scandal of Father
Brown (1935)
A modern man may disapprove of some of his

sweeping reforms, and approve others; but nds it
dicult not to admire even where he does not approve.
10
QUOTES
Said of Benito Mussolini while comparing him

to Hildebrand (i. e. Pope Gregory VII), as
quoted in The Pearl of Great Price by Robert
Royal, his Introduction to The Resurrection
of Rome by G. K. Chesterton in The Collected
Works of G.K. Chesterton (1990) by Vol. XXI,
p. 274
I've searched all the parks in all the cities and
found no statues of Committees.
As quoted in Trust Or Consequences : Build
Trust Today Or Lose Your Market Tomorrow
(2004) by Al Golin, p. 206; also in Storms of
Life (2008) by Dr. Don Givens, p. 136
The poor object to being governed badly, while
the rich object to being governed at all.
As quoted in Grace at the Table : Ending
Hunger in Gods World (1999) by David M.
Beckmann abd Arthur R. Simon, p. 156
And I will add this point of merely personal experience of humanity: when men have a real explanation they explain it, eagerly and copiously and
in common speech, as Huxley freely gave it when
he thought he had it. When they have no explanation to oer, they give short dignied replies,
disdainful of the ignorance of the multitude.
Doubts About Darwinism, in The Illustrated
London News (17 July 1920)
It is only great men who take up a great space by not
being there.
Lecture at the University of Notre Dame (13
October 1930), as quoted in notes taken by
Professor Richard Baker, of the University of
Dayton, and published in The Chesterton Re- The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally
lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal eort to persuade all the
view (Winter/Spring 1977)
A sti apology is a second insult.
The Real Dr. Johnson, The Common Man
(1950)
1.1
The Defendant (1901)

A collection of essays previously published in The
Speaker and The Daily News.
The cause which is blocking all progress today

is the subtle scepticism which whispers in a million ears that things are not good enough to be
worth improving. If the world is good we are
other people how good they are. It has been proved a hundred
times over that if you really wish to enrage people and make them
angry, even unto death, the right way to do it is to tell them that
they are all the sons of God.
revolutionaries, if the world is evil we must be

conservatives. These essays, futile as they are considered as serious literature, are yet ethically sincere,
since they seek to remind men that things must be
loved rst and improved afterwards.
In Defence Of A New Edition - Preface to
the second edition (1902)
In our time the blasphemies are threadbare.
Pessimism is now patently, as it always was essentially, more commonplace than piety. Profan-
1.1
The Defendant (1901)

ity is now more than an aectation it is a convention. The curse against God is Exercise I in the
primer of minor poetry.
Introduction
There runs a strange law through the length of

human history that men are continually tending to undervalue their environment, to undervalue their happiness, to undervalue themselves.
The great sin of mankind, the sin typied by the fall
of Adam, is the tendency, not towards pride, but towards this weird and horrible humility.
This is the great fall, the fall by which the sh forgets the sea, the ox forgets the meadow, the clerk
forgets the city, every man forgets his environment
and, in the fullest and most literal sense, forgets himself. This is the real fall of Adam, and it is a spiritual
fall. It is a strange thing that many truly spiritual men, such as General Gordon, have actually
spent some hours in speculating upon the precise
location of the Garden of Eden. Most probably
we are in Eden still. It is only our eyes that have
changed.
Introduction
The pessimist is commonly spoken of as the man in
revolt. He is not. Firstly, because it requires some
cheerfulness to continue in revolt, and secondly, because pessimism appeals to the weaker side of everybody, and the pessimist, therefore, drives as roaring a trade as the publican. The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives
and dies in a desperate and suicidal eort to persuade all the other people how good they are. It
has been proved a hundred times over that if you
really wish to enrage people and make them angry,
even unto death, the right way to do it is to tell them
that they are all the sons of God.
11
rare occasions as that in which it is neatly and scientically planted in the middle of ones back. The
coarsest and bluntest knife which ever broke a pencil
into pieces instead of sharpening it is a good thing in
so far as it is a knife. It would have appeared a miracle in the Stone Age. What we call a bad knife is
a good knife not good enough for us; what we call a
bad hat is a good hat not good enough for us; what we
call bad cookery is good cookery not good enough
for us; what we call a bad civilization is a good civilization not good enough for us. We choose to call
the great mass of the history of mankind bad, not
because it is bad, but because we are better. This
is palpably an unfair principle. Ivory may not be
so white as snow, but the whole Arctic continent
does not make ivory black.
Introduction
Now it has appeared to me unfair that humanity
should be engaged perpetually in calling all those
things bad which have been good enough to make
other things better, in everlastingly kicking down the
ladder by which it has climbed. It has appeared to
me that progress should be something else besides
a continual parricide; therefore I have investigated
the dust-heaps of humanity, and found a treasure in all of them. I have found that humanity is not incidentally engaged, but eternally and
systematically engaged, in throwing gold into the
gutter and diamonds into the sea.
Introduction
Introduction
Every one of the great revolutionists, from
Isaiah to Shelley, have been optimists. They have
been indignant, not about the badness of existence, but about the slowness of men in realizing
its goodness.
Introduction
Let me explain a little: Certain things are bad so far
as they go, such as pain, and no one, not even a lunatic, calls a tooth-ache good in itself; but a knife
which cuts clumsily and with diculty is called a
bad knife, which it certainly is not. It is only not
so good as other knives to which men have grown
accustomed. A knife is never bad except on such
Humility is the luxurious art of reducing ourselves to a point, not

to a small thing or a large one, but to a thing with no size at all,
so that to it all the cosmic things are what they really are of
immeasurable stature.
The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has

today all the exhilaration of a vice. Moral truisms
have been so much disputed that they have begun to
sparkle like so many brilliant paradoxes.
12
1
A Defence of Humilities
We all know that the 'divine glory of the ego' is

socially a great nuisance; we all do actually value
our friends for modesty, freshness, and simplicity
of heart. Whatever may be the reason, we all do
warmly respect humility in other people.
QUOTES
There is a road from the eye to the heart that

does not go through the intellect. Men do not
quarrel about the meaning of sunsets; they never
dispute that the hawthorn says the best and wittiest
thing about the spring.
A Defence of Heraldry
The one stream of poetry which is continually owing is slang.
A Defence of Slang
All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.
"[http://books.google.com/books?id=
8WpaAAAAMAAJ&q=\char"0022\
relax{}all+slang+is+metaphor+and+all+
metaphor+is+poetry\char"0022\relax{}&
pg=PA110#v=onepage A Defense of Slang]"
There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through
the intellect.
It is always the secure who are humble.

A beetle may or may not be inferior to a man the
matter awaits demonstration; but if he were inferior
by ten thousand fathoms, the fact remains that there
is probably a beetle view of things of which a man
is entirely ignorant. If he wishes to conceive that If we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child
point of view, he will scarcely reach it by persistently sees them, we should need no other apocalypse.
revelling in the fact that he is not a beetle.
Humility is the luxurious art of reducing ourselves to a point, not to a small thing or a large
one, but to a thing with no size at all, so that to
it all the cosmic things are what they really are
of immeasurable stature. That the trees are
high and the grasses short is a mere accident of our
own foot-rules and our own stature. But to the spirit
which has stripped o for a moment its own idle
temporal standards the grass is an everlasting forest,
with dragons for denizens; the stones of the road are
as incredible mountains piled one upon the other;
the dandelions are like gigantic bonres illuminating
the lands around; and the heath-bells on their stalks
are like planets hung in heaven each higher than the
other.
The most unfathomable schools and sages have

never attained to the gravity which dwells in the
eyes of a baby of three months old. It is the
gravity of astonishment at the universe, and astonishment at the universe is not mysticism, but
a transcendent common-sense. The fascination
of children lies in this: that with each of them all
things are remade, and the universe is put again upon
its trial. As we walk the streets and see below us
those delightful bulbous heads, three times too big
for the body, which mark these human mushrooms,
we ought always primarily to remember that within
every one of these heads there is a new universe,
as new as it was on the seventh day of creation. In
each of those orbs there is a new system of stars,
new grass, new cities, a new sea.
A Defence of Baby-Worship
1.2
The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)
13
The truth is that it is our attitude towards children that is right,

and our attitude towards grown-up people that is wrong.
There is always in the healthy mind an obscure

prompting that religion teaches us rather to dig than
to climb; that if we could once understand the common clay of earth we should understand everything.
Similarly, we have the sentiment that if we could
destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a
child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse. This is the great truth which has always lain
at the back of baby-worship, and which will support
it to the end
The truth is that it is our attitude towards children that is right, and our attitude towards
grown-up people that is wrong. Our attitude towards our equals in age consists in a servile solemnity, overlying a considerable degree of indierence
or disdain. Our attitude towards children consists
in a condescending indulgence, overlying an unfathomable respect.
When we reverence anything in the mature, it is their
virtues or their wisdom, and this is an easy matter.
But we reverence the faults and follies of children.
We should probably come considerably nearer to
the true conception of things if we treated all
grown-up persons, of all titles and types, with
precisely that dark aection and dazed respect
with which we treat the infantile limitations.
The humorous look of children is perhaps the most endearing of

all the bonds that hold the Cosmos together.
regard them as marvels; we seem to be dealing with

a new race, only to be seen through a microscope.
I doubt if anyone of any tenderness or imagination
can see the hand of a child and not be a little frightened of it. It is awful to think of the essential human
energy moving so tiny a thing; it is like imagining
that human nature could live in the wing of a buttery or the leaf of a tree. When we look upon lives
so human and yet so small, we feel as if we ourselves were enlarged to an embarrassing bigness
of stature. We feel the same kind of obligation to
these creatures that a deity might feel if he had
created something that he could not understand.
The humorous look of children is perhaps the
most endearing of all the bonds that hold the
Cosmos together. Their top-heavy dignity is more
touching than any humility; their solemnity gives us
more hope for all things than a thousand carnivals of
optimism; their large and lustrous eyes seem to hold
all the stars in their astonishment; their fascinating
absence of nose seems to give to us the most perfect
hint of the humour that awaits us in the kingdom of
heaven.
'My country, right or wrong' is a thing that no patriot
would think of saying, except in a desperate case. It
is like saying, 'My mother, drunk or sober'.
A Defence of Patriotism
The essential rectitude of our view of children lies in

the fact that we feel them and their ways to be super- 1.2 The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)
natural while, for some mysterious reason, we do not
The human race, to which so many of my readfeel ourselves or our own ways to be supernatural.
ers belong, has been playing at childrens games
The very smallness of children makes it possible to
14
QUOTES

All revolutions are doctrinal such as the French
one, or the one that introduced Christianity.
1.3
Heretics (1905)
There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting

subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.
1.4
Charles Dickens (1906)
Human beings, being children, have the childish wilfulness and

the childish secrecy. And they never have from the beginning of
the world done what the wise men have seen to be inevitable.
from the beginning, and will probably do it till

the end, which is a nuisance for the few people
who grow up. And one of the games to which it is
most attached is called Keep to-morrow dark, and
which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire,
I have no doubt) Cheat the Prophet. The players
listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the
clever men have to say about what is to happen in The thing that cannot be dened is the rst thing; the primary
the next generation. The players then wait until all fact.
the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. They
then go and do something else. That is all. For a
Much of our modern diculty, in religion and
race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun.
other things, arises merely from this: that we
For human beings, being children, have the
confuse the word indenable with the word
childish wilfulness and the childish secrecy. And
vague. If some one speaks of a spiritual fact as
they never have from the beginning of the world
indenable we promptly picture something misty,
done what the wise men have seen to be ina cloud with indeterminate edges. But this is an error
evitable.
even in commonplace logic. The thing that cannot be dened is the rst thing; the primary fact.
Opening lines
It is our arms and legs, our pots and pans, that are
indenable. The indenable is the indisputable.
Many clever men like you have trusted to
The man next door is indenable, because he is
civilization.
Many clever Babylonians, many
too actual to be dened. And there are some to
clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end
whom spiritual things have the same erce and
of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is
practical proximity; some to whom God is too
agrant with the failures of civilisation, what
actual to be dened.
there is particularly immortal about yours?
Lord! what a strange world in which a man cannot
remain unique even by taking the trouble to go mad!
Ch 1 : The Dickens Period

Whatever the word great means, Dickens was what
it means.
1.5
All Things Considered (1908)
15

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.
America has a new delicacy, a coarse, rank renement.
Ch. 6 Dickens and America
A sober man may become a drunkard through
being a coward. A brave man may become a coward through being a drunkard.
Ch. 8 The Time of Transition
When some English moralists write about the
importance of having character, they appear to
mean only the importance of having a dull character.
Ch. 10 The Great Dickens Characters
To be at last in such secure innocence that one can juggle with the
A man looking at a hippopotamus may sometimes universe and the stars, to be so good that one can treat everything
be tempted to regard a hippopotamus as an enor- as a joke that may be, perhaps, the real end and nal holiday
mous mistake; but he is also bound to confess that of human souls.
a fortunate inferiority prevents him personally from
making such mistakes.
It is incomprehensible to me that any thinker can
calmly call himself a modernist; he might as well
Ch. 10 The Great Dickens Characters
call himself a Thursdayite. The real objection
to modernism is simply that it is a form of snobbishness. It is an attempt to crush a rational opponent
1.5 All Things Considered (1908)
not by reason, but by some mystery of superiority,
by hinting that one is specially up to date or parFull text online at Wikisource
ticularly in the know. To aunt the fact that we
have had all the last books from Germany is simply
I cannot understand the people who take litervulgar; like aunting the fact that we have had all
ature seriously; but I can love them, and I do.
the last bonnets from Paris. To introduce into philoOut of my love I warn them to keep clear of this
sophical discussions a sneer at a creeds antiquity is
book. It is a collection of crude and shapeless palike introducing a sneer at a ladys age. It is cadpers upon current or rather ying subjects; and they
dish because it is irrelevant. The pure modernist
must be published pretty much as they stand. They
is merely a snob; he cannot bear to be a month
were written, as a rule, at the last moment; they were
behind the fashion.
handed in the moment before it was too late, and I do
not think that our commonwealth would have been
The Case for the Ephemeral
shaken to its foundations if they had been handed in
the moment after. They must go out now, with all
An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly
their imperfections on their head, or rather on mine;
considered; an adventure is an inconvenience
for their vices are too vital to be improved with a
rightly considered.
blue pencil, or with anything I can think of, except
"On Running After Ones Hat"
dynamite.
Their chief vice is that so many of them are very
For my part, I should be inclined to suggest that the
serious; because I had no time to make them ipchief object of education should be to restore simpant. It is so easy to be solemn; it is so hard to
plicity. If you like to put it so, the chief object of
be frivolous.
education is not to learn things; nay, the chief
"The Case for the Ephemeral"
object of education is to unlearn things.
16
QUOTES
An Essay on Two Cities

It is not only possible to say a great deal in praise
of play; it is really possible to say the highest
things in praise of it. It might reasonably be
maintained that the true object of all human life
is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground. To be at last in such secure innocence that
one can juggle with the universe and the stars, to be
so good that one can treat everything as a joke
that may be, perhaps, the real end and nal holiday
of human souls.
"Oxford from Without"
Our chiefs said 'Done,' and I did not deem it;
For fear of the newspapers politicians are dull,

Our seers said 'Peace,' and it was not peace;
and at last they are too dull even for the news- Earth will grow worse till men redeem it,
papers. The speeches in our time are more careful And wars more evil, ere all wars cease.
and elaborate, because they are meant to be read,
and not to be heard. And exactly because they are
Our chiefs said 'Done,' and I did not deem it;
more careful and elaborate, they are not so likely to
Our seers said 'Peace,' and it was not peace;
be worthy of a careful and elaborate report. They are
Earth will grow worse till men redeem it,
not interesting enough. So the moral cowardice of
And wars more evil, ere all wars cease.
modern politicians has, after all, some punishment
attached to it by the silent anger of heaven. Pre For we that ght till the world is free,
cisely because our political speeches are meant to
We are not easy in victory:
be reported, they are not worth reporting. PreWe have known each other too long, my brother,
cisely because they are carefully designed to be
And fought each other, the world and we.
read, nobody reads them.
On the Cryptic and the Elliptic
It is all as of old, the empty clangour,

The NOTHING scrawled on a ve-foot page,
The huckster who, mocking holy anger,
Painfully paints his face with rage.
We that ght till the world is free,

We have no comfort in victory;
We have read each other as Cain his brother,
We know each other, these slaves and we.
It is not funny that anything else should fall down;

only that a man should fall down. No one sees anything funny in a tree falling down. No one sees a
delicate absurdity in a stone falling down. No man
stops in the road and roars with laughter at the sight
of the snow coming down. The fall of thunderbolts
is treated with some gravity. The fall of roofs and
high buildings is taken seriously. It is only when a
man tumbles down that we laugh. Why do we laugh?
Because it is a grave religious matter: it is the Fall 1.7
of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man
can be dignied.
Spiritualism
It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke
about it.
Spiritualism
1.6
A Song of Defeat (1910)

Fully published in Poems (1917), but appearing in
part in Sketches and Snapshots (1910) by George
William Russell
The Father Brown Mystery Series (1910

- 1927)
The Complete Father Brown Series online
The most incredible thing about miracles is that

they happen.
The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) The
Blue Cross
If you know what a mans doing, get in front of him;
but if you want to guess what hes doing keep behind
him.
Blue Cross
1.8
Magic: A Fantastic Comedy (1913)
17
Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man
has ever been able to keep on one level of evil.
Flying Stars
One can sometimes do good by being the right
person in the wrong place.
Sins of Prince Saradine
Very few reputations are gained by unsullied virtue.
The things that happen here do not seem to mean
anything; they mean something somewhere else.
Somewhere else retribution will come on the real
oender. Here it often seems to fall on the wrong
person.
To be clever enough to get all that money, one must
be stupid enough to want it.
Paradise of Thieves
If you convey to a woman that something ought to be done, there

is always a dreadful danger that she will suddenly do it.
One of his hobbies was to wait for the American Shakespeare a hobby more patient than
angling.
Journalism largely consists in saying 'Lord

Jones Dead' to people who never knew Lord
Jones was alive.
The Wisdom of Father Brown (1914) The Purple Wig
''The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) The

Secret Garden
His head was always most valuable when he had
lost it. In such moments he put two and two together and made four million.
If you convey to a woman that something ought

to be done, there is always a dreadful danger that
she will suddenly do it.
The Secret of Father Brown (1927) The Song
of the Flying Fish

Queer Feet
Silver is sometimes more valuable than gold, that
is, in large quantities.
Queer Feet
1.8
I object to a quarrel because it always interrupts

an argument.
1.9
Odd, isn't it, that a thief and a vagabond should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and frivolous, and without fruit for God
or man?
Queer Feet
Magic: A Fantastic Comedy (1913)
The Victorian Age in Literature (1913)

University of Notre Dame Press, 1963
It is a quaint comment on the notion that the English

are practical and the French merely visionary, that
we were rebels in arts while they were rebels in arms.
18
QUOTES
On William Makepeace Thackeray Ch. II:

The Great Victorian Novelists (p. 65)
It is largely because the free-thinkers, as a school,
have hardly made up their minds whether they want
to be more optimist or more pessimist than Christianity that their small but sincere movement has
failed.
Ch. II: The Great Victorian Novelists (p. 73)
He was, if ever there was one, an inspired poet. I do
not think it the highest sort of poet. And you never
discover who is an inspired poet until the inspiration
goes.
The mind moves by instincts, associations and premonitions and
not by xed dates or completed processes.
On Algernon Charles Swinburne Ch. III: The

Great Victorian Poets (p. 95)
Ch I: The Victorian Compromise and Its Ene1.10

mies (p. 8)
Who Goes Home? (1914)
The mind moves by instincts, associations and

premonitions and not by xed dates or completed processes. Action and reaction will occur
simultaneously: or the cause actually be found
after the eect. Errors will be resisted before they
have been properly promulgated: notions will be
rst dened long after they are dead.
Ch I: The Victorian Compromise and Its Enemies (p. 17)
A man making the confession of any creed worth ten
minutes intelligent talk, is always a man who gains
something and gives up something. So long as he
does both he can create: for he is making an outline and a shape.
The central idea of poetry is the idea of guessing
right, like a child.
Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but
the end of thought.
He did not know the way things were going: he was
too Victorian to understand the Victorian epoch. He
did not know enough ignorant people to have heard
the news.
Who is for victory?

Who is for liberty?
Who goes home?
This rst appeared in The Flying Inn (1914), Ch.

XXI : The Road to Roundabout, p. 275
In the city set upon slime and loam,

They cry in their Parliament, Who goes home?"
And there comes no answer in arch or dome,
For none in the city of graves goes home.
Yet these shall perish and understand,
For God has pity on this great land.
Men that are men again: Who goes home?
Tocsin and trumpeter! Who goes home?
For theres blood on the grass and blood on the foam,
1.12
Utopia of Usurers (1917)

And blood on the body, when Man comes home.
And a voice valedictory: Who is for victory?
Who is for liberty?
Who goes home?
1.11
Poems (1917)
19
It is something to have hungered once as those
Must hunger who have ate the bread of gods.
To have seen you and your unforgotten face,
Brave as a blast of trumpets for the fray,
Pure as white lilies in a watery space,
It were something, though you went from me today.
To have known the things that from the weak are
furled,
Perilous ancient passions, strange and high;
It is something to be wiser than the world,
It is something to be older than the sky.
In a time of sceptic moths and cynic rusts,
And fattened lives that of their sweetness tire
In a world of ying loves and fading lusts,
It is something to be sure of a desire.
Lo, blessed are our ears for they have heard;
Yea, blessed are our eyes for they have seen:
Let the thunder break on man and beast and
bird
And the lightning. It is something to have been.
1.12
It is something to be wiser than the world,
It is something to be older than the sky.
Utopia of Usurers (1917)
Full text online
1.11.1 The Great Minimum
Let the thunder break on man and beast and bird

And the lightning. It is something to have been.
It is something to have wept as we have wept,

It is something to have done as we have done,
It is something to have watched when all men
slept,
And seen the stars which never see the sun.
It is something to have smelt the mystic rose,
Although it break and leave the thorny rods,
A fairly clear line separated advertisement from art. The rst

eect of the triumph of the capitalist (if we allow him to triumph) will be that that line of demarcation will entirely disappear. There will be no art that might not just as well be advertisement.
20
QUOTES
we allow him to triumph) will be that that line of

demarcation will entirely disappear. There will be
no art that might not just as well be advertisement.
p. 6
Literary men are being employed to praise a big
business man personally, as men used to praise a
king. They not only nd political reasons for the
commercial schemesthat they have done for some
time pastthey also nd moral defences for the
commercial schemers. I do resent the whole age
of patronage being revived under such absurd patrons; and all poets becoming court poets, under
kings that have taken no oath.
pp. 15-17
The big commercial concerns of to-day are quite exceptionally

incompetent. They will be even more incompetent when they are
omnipotent.
Even the tyrant never rules by force alone; but

mostly by fairy tales. And so it is with the modern
tyrant, the great employer. The sight of a millionaire is seldom, in the ordinary sense, an enchanting
sight: nevertheless, he is in his way an enchanter.
As they say in the gushing articles about him in the
magazines, he is a fascinating personality. So is a
snake. At least he is fascinating to rabbits; and so
is the millionaire to the rabbit-witted sort of people
that ladies and gentlemen have allowed themselves
to become.
p. 19
The big commercial concerns of to-day are quite exceptionally incompetent. They will be even more
incompetent when they are omnipotent.
p. 23
Employers will give time to eat, time to sleep; they
are in terror of a time to think.
p. 31
The new community which the capitalists are now
constructing will be a very complete and absolute
community; and one which will tolerate nothing really independent of itself.
pp. 33-34
The new community which the capitalists are now constructing

will be a very complete and absolute community; and one which
will tolerate nothing really independent of itself.
A fairly clear line separated advertisement from art.

The rst eect of the triumph of the capitalist (if
In every serious doctrine of the destiny of men, there

is some trace of the doctrine of the equality of men.
But the capitalist really depends on some religion
of inequality. The capitalist must somehow distinguish himself from human kind; he must be obviously above itor he would be obviously below it.
p. 34
1.14
What I Saw in America (1922)
Wait and see whether the religion of the Servile

State is not in every case what I say: the encouragement of small virtues supporting capitalism, the
discouragement of the huge virtues that defy it.
p. 37
1.13
The Superstition of Divorce (1920)
I do not ask them to assume the worth of my

creed or any creed; and I could wish they did
not so often ask me to assume the worth of their
worthless, poisonous plutocratic modern society. But if it could be shown, as I think it can, that
a long historical view and a patient political experience can at last accumulate solid scientic evidence
of the vital need of such a vow, then I can conceive
no more tremendous tribute than this, to any
faith, which made a aming armation from
the darkest beginnings, of what the latest enlightenment can only slowly discover in the end.
Say that a thing is so, according to the Pope or the
Bible, and it will be dismissed as a superstition without examination. But preface your remark merely
with they say or don't you know that?" or try (and
fail) to remember the name of some professor mentioned in some newspaper; and the keen rationalism
of the modern mind will accept every word you say.
1.14
What I Saw in America (1922)
There is truth in every ancient fable, and there is here even something of it in the fancy that nds the symbol of the Republic in
the bird that bore the bolts of Jove.
21
was a foreigner in America; and I can truly claim
that the sense of my own laughable position never
left me. But when the native and the foreigner have
nished with seeing the fun of each other in things
that are meant to be serious, they both approach the
far more delicate and dangerous ground of things
that are meant to be funny. The sense of humour
is generally very national; perhaps that is why the
internationalists are so careful to purge themselves
of it. I had occasion during the war to consider the
rights and wrongs of certain dierences alleged to
have arisen between the English and American soldiers at the front. And, rightly or wrongly, I came
to the conclusion that they arose from the failure to
understand when a foreigner is serious and when he
is humorous. And it is in the very nature of the
best sort of joke to be the worst sort of insult if
it is not taken as a joke.
Fads and Public Opinion
Now there is any amount of this nonsense cropping up among American cranks. Anybody may
propose to establish coercive Eugenics; or enforce psychoanalysis that is, enforce confession without absolution.
The truth is that prohibitions might have done far
less harm as prohibitions, if a vague association had
not arisen, on some dark day of human unreason,
between prohibition and progress. And it was the
progress that did the harm, not the prohibition. Men
can enjoy life under considerable limitations, if
they can be sure of their limited enjoyments; but
under Progressive Puritanism we can never be
sure of anything. The curse of it is not limitation; it is unlimited limitation. The evil is not in
the restriction; but in the fact that nothing can
ever restrict the restriction. The prohibitions are
bound to progress point by point; more and more human rights and pleasures must of necessity be taken
away; for it is of the nature of this futurism that the
latest fad is the faith of the future, and the most fantastic fad inevitably makes the pace. Thus the worst
thing in the seventeenth-century aberration was not
so much Puritanism as sectarianism. It searched
for truth not by synthesis but by subdivision. It
not only broke religion into small pieces, but it
was bound to choose the smallest piece.
Full text online
A foreigner is a man who laughs at everything

except jokes. He is perfectly entitled to laugh at
anything, so long as he realises, in a reverent and
religious spirit, that he himself is laughable. I
The last hundred years has seen a general decline in the democratic idea. If there be anybody left to whom this historical truth appears
a paradox, it is only because during that period
nobody has been taught history, least of all the
22
1
history of ideas. If a sort of intellectual inquisition had been established, for the denition and differentiation of heresies, it would have been found
that the original republican orthodoxy had suered
more and more from secessions, schisms, and backslidings. The highest point of democratic idealism and conviction was towards the end of the
eighteenth century, when the American Republic was 'dedicated to the proposition that all men
are equal.' It was then that the largest number
of men had the most serious sort of conviction
that the political problem could be solved by the
vote of peoples instead of the arbitrary power of
princes and privileged orders.
The Future of Democracy
There is truth in every ancient fable, and there is

here even something of it in the fancy that nds
the symbol of the Republic in the bird that bore
the bolts of Jove. Owls and bats may wander where
they will in darkness, and for them as for the sceptics
the universe may have no centre; kites and vultures
may linger as they like over carrion, and for them as
for the plutocrats existence may have no origin and
no end; but it was far back in the land of legends,
where instincts nd their true images, that the cry
went forth that freedom is an eagle, whose glory
is gazing at the sun.
The Future of Democracy
1.15
The Everlasting Man (1925)
About sex especially men are born unbalanced; we

might almost say men are born mad. They scarcely
reach sanity till they reach sanctity.
1.16
The Dagger with Wings (1926)
We are talking about an artist; and for the enjoyment of the artist the mask must be to some
extent moulded on the face. What he makes outside him must correspond to something inside
him; he can only make his eects out of some of
the materials of his soul.
An artist will betray himself by some sort of sincerity.
QUOTES
'I say I'm an agnostic,' replied Father Brown, smiling.

'Nonsense,' said Aylmer impatiently. 'Its your business to believe things.'
'Well, I do believe some things, of course,' conceded Father Brown; 'and therefore, of course, I
don't believe other things.' .
'You do believe it,' he said. 'You do believe everything. We all believe everything, even when we deny
everything. The denyers believe. The unbelievers
believe. Don't you feel in your heart that these contradictions do not really contradict: that there is a
cosmos that contains them all? The soul goes round
upon a wheel of stars and all things return; perhaps Strake and I have striven in many shapes, beast
against beast and bird against bird, and perhaps we
shall strive for ever. But since we seek and need
each other, even that eternal hatred is an eternal love.
Good and evil go round in a wheel that is one thing
and not many. Do you not realize in your heart, do
you not believe behind all your beliefs, that there is
but one reality and we are its shadows; and that all
things are but aspects of one thing: a centre where
men melt into Man and Man into God?'
'No,' said Father Brown.
He had the notion that because I am a clergyman
I should believe anything. Many people have little
notions of that kind.
All things are from God; and above all, reason
and imagination and the great gifts of the mind.
They are good in themselves; and we must not
altogether forget their origin even in their perversion.
'I'm afraid I'm a practical man,' said the doctor with
gru humour, 'and I don't bother much about religion and philosophy.'
'You'll never be a practical man till you do,' said Father Brown. 'Look here, doctor; you know me
pretty well; I think you know I'm not a bigot.
You know I know there are all sorts in all religions; good men in bad ones and bad men in
good ones.
Yet he is right enough about there being a white
magic, if he only knows where to look for it.
You have no business to be an unbeliever. You ought 1.17 The Thing (1929)
to stand for all the things these stupid people call
The Thing : Why I Am A Catholic (1929)
superstitions. Come now, don't you think theres a
lot in those old wives tales about luck and charms
In the matter of reforming things, as distinct
and so on, silver bullets included? What do you say
from deforming them, there is one plain and
about them as a Catholic?'
23
simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a
case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the
sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a
road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily
up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us
clear it away." To which the more intelligent type
of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't
see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it
away. Go away and think. Then, when you can
come back and tell me that you do see the use of
it, I may allow you to destroy it."
This paradox rests on the most elementary common
sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was
not set up by somnambulists who built it in their
sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there
by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose
in the street. Some person had some reason for
thinking it would be a good thing for somebody.
And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have
overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if
something set up by human beings like ourselves
seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this diculty
by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if
that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be
a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody
has any business to destroy a social institution
until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be
able to say that they were bad purposes, or that
they have since become bad purposes, or that
they are purposes which are no longer served.
But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in
his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is
suering from an illusion.
Ch. IV : The Drift From Domesticity
Misattributed
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.
Original quote:
For my friend said that he opened his intellect as the sun opens the fans of a palm
tree, opening for openings sake, opening innitely for ever. But I said that
I opened my intellect as I opened my
mouth, in order to shut it again on
something solid. I was doing it at the
moment. And as I truly pointed out, it

would look uncommonly silly if I went on
opening my mouth innitely, for ever and
ever.
The Extraordinary Cabman, one of many
essays collected in Tremendous Tries
(1909)
When people stop believing in God, they dont believe in nothing they believe in anything.
This quotation actually comes from page 211
of mile Cammaerts' book The Laughing
Prophet : The Seven Virtues and G. K. Chesterton (1937) in which he quotes Chesterton as
having Father Brown say, in The Oracle of
the Dog (1923): "Its the rst eect of not
believing in God that you lose your common sense." Cammaerts then interposes his
own analysis between further quotes from Father Brown: "'Its drowning all your old rationalism and scepticism, its coming in like a sea;
and the name of it is superstition.' The rst effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything: 'And a dog is an omen and a cat is a mystery.'" Note that the remark about believing in
anything is outside the quotation marks it is
Cammaerts. Nigel Rees is credited with identifying this as the source of the misattribution,
in a 1997 issue of First Things
A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnies
triing things but cannot receive great ones.
Though sometimes misattributed to Chesterton, this is generally attributed to Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chestereld, with the rst
publication of this yet located is in a section
of proverbs called Diamond Dust in Eliza
Cook's Journal, No. 98 (15 March 1851),
with the rst attribution to Chestereld as yet
located in: Many Thoughts of Many Minds
(1862) edited by Henry Southgate.
Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up.
According to The American Chesterton Society, this quotation is actually a paraphrase by
John F. Kennedy of a passage from The Thing
(1929) in which Chesterton made reference to
a fence or gate erected across a road: The
more modern type of reformer goes gaily up
to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let
us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer:
"If you don't see the use of it, I certainly
won't let you clear it away. Go away and
think. Then, when you can come back and
24
3 QUOTES ABOUT CHESTERTON

tell me that you do see the use of it, I may
allow you to destroy it."
Q: Whats wrong with the world? A: I am.

Purportedly a response by Chesterton to the
question posed around 1910 by the The Times
of London (along with other luminaries),
but biographer Kevin Belmonte, in 'Deant
Joy: the Remarkable Life & Impact of G.K.
Chesterton', was unable to verify. Belmonte
surmises its origin in an anecdote that while
writing Whats Wrong with the World (told in
the books preface), he would delight in telling
society ladies that I have been doing 'What is
Wrong' all this morning.
And when it rains on your parade, look up rather
than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.
A popular internet misattribution.[citation needed]
A number of variants of the rain on your parade theme appear, with dierent sources
A man knocking on the door of a brothel is looking
for God.
The source is actually a 1945 book by Bruce
Marshall, The World, The Flesh, and Father
Smith, in which he says, "...the young man
who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God."
Quotes about Chesterton

The insistence of the Christian doctrine on mans
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.
Hannah Arendt, commenting on Chesterton
and Charles Pguy in Christianity and Revolution, in Hannah Arendt, Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954 (1994), edited by Jerome
Kohn, p. 154
Mr Chesterton was not mistaken in his vocation
when he set out to write stories. He is a born storyteller, which is quite a dierent thing from being
a born novelist. The old trade of story-telling is,

as he himself has said, a much older thing than the
modern art of ction. The Oriental who spread his
carpet in the marketplace, the medieval bard who
sang a ballad at his masters feast, made no appeal to
that curiosity about the varieties of the human soul
which is increasingly the inspiration of the modern
novel. If he touched on human psychology at all
he dealt only with those primal passions and desires
which are common to all normal men. But, for the
interest of his art, he depended simply upon his capacity to tell a good story, and to tell it well. In the
last resort, Mr. Chestertons novels depend for their
interest on the same power.
Cecil Chesterton, G. K. Chesterton, a Criticism
(1909)
In its fundamental conception, as well as in
many of the signicant details of its working
out, Lord of the Rings is heavily indebted to G.
K. Chestertons now little read poem of 1911,The
Ballad of the White Horse.
The major theme of both works is the war and eventual victory, despite all odds, of an alliance of good
folk against vastly more powerful forces of evil, and
the return of a king to his rightful state. Like Lord
of the Rings, Chestertons poem is set in a heroic society after the decay of a highly civilized imperial
power in England, that is to say, in the aftermath
of the Roman Empire. (Tolkien's Minas Tirith, built
on seven levels, greatly resembles a medieval idealization of Rome.) King Alfred, its hero,is ghting a losing war to save his kingdom from complete
conquest by the Danes. As one would expect with
Chesterton, it is a war of white against black, of
Christianity against a diabolical paganism that has
defeated Rome and is now trying to make all good
men its slaves. The enemy is not simply Danes,
or barbarians in general, but a wholly malignant and
almost irresistible force that stands behind all the enemies of Christianity: This power blights everything
it touches there are repeated references to its distorting eects even on the natural world and the
men who serve it become like Tolkiens Orcs.
To ght against this menace, Alfred, hiding in exile,
summons three kindreds of free, Christian peoples
as allies. Alfred himself, like Tolkiens Aragorn,
is an idealized heroic gure who roams around
in humble disguise and is sometimes mistreated
by the ignorant. Instead of Dwarves, Elves, and
Men of Numenorean descent, he leads an alliance of Saxons, Celts, and Romans.
Cristopher Clausen, in "The Lord of the Rings
and The Ballad of the White Horse" in South
Atlantic Bulletin 39.2 (May 1974)
The authors would like to join the demon Crow-
25
ley in dedicating this book to the memory of G. K.
Chesterton. A man who knew what was going on.
Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, on the
dedication page of Good Omens: The Nice
and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter,
Witch (1990), a satire of prophecies of the
Apocalypse and Armageddon
Chesterton was important as important to me
in his way as C. S. Lewis had been.
You see, while I loved Tolkien and while I wished to
have written his book, I had no desire at all to write
like him. Tolkiens words and sentences seemed
like natural things, like rock formations or waterfalls, and wanting to write like Tolkien would have
been, for me, like wanting to blossom like a cherry
tree or climb a tree like a squirrel or rain like a
thunderstorm. Chesterton was the complete opposite. I was always aware, reading Chesterton,
that there was someone writing this who rejoiced
in words, who deployed them on the page as an
artist deploys his paints upon his palette. Behind every Chesterton sentence there was someone
painting with words, and it seemed to me that at
the end of any particularly good sentence or any
perfectly-put paradox, you could hear the author,
somewhere behind the scenes, giggling with delight.
Neil Gaiman, in his Mythcon 35 Guest of
Honor Speech, in Mythprint (October 2004)
Chesterton and Tolkien and Lewis were, as Ive said,
not the only writers I read between the ages of six
and thirteen, but they were the authors I read over
and over again; each of them played a part in building me. Without them, I cannot imagine that I would
have become a writer, and certainly not a writer of
fantastic ction. I would not have understood that
the best way to show people true things is from
a direction that they had not imagined the truth
coming, nor that the majesty and the magic of
belief and dreams could be a vital part of life
and of writing.
And without those three writers, I would not be here
today. And nor, of course, would any of you. I thank
you.
Neil Gaiman, in his Mythcon 35 Guest of
Honor Speech, in Mythprint (October 2004)
I consider it as being without possible comparison
the best book ever written on St. Thomas. Nothing
short of genius can account for such an achievement.
Everybody will no doubt admit that it is a clever
book, but the few readers who have spent twenty or
thirty years in studying St. Thomascannot fail to
perceive that the so-called wit of Chesterton has put
their scholarship to shame. He has guessed all that
which we had tried to demonstrate, and he has said

all that which they were more or less clumsily attempting to express in academic formulas. Chesterton was one of the deepest thinkers who ever existed;
he was deep because he was right; and he could not
help being right; but he could not either help being modest and charitable, so he left it to those who
could understand him to know that he was right, and
deep; to the others, he apologized for being right,
and he made up for being deep by being witty. That
is all they can see of him.
tienne Gilson, writing about Chestertons
book on St. Thomas Aquinas.
There is great poetry being written now.
Chesterton, for instance.
G.K.
Robert E. Howard, in a letter to his friend

Tevis Clyde Smith (6 August 1926)
Several books I purchased on my trip, among them
G. K. Chestertons The Ballad of the White Horse.
Ever read it? Its great.
Robert E. Howard, in a letter to his friend
Tevis Clyde Smith (c. September 1927)
To speak of ideals and their signicance as goals
to be reached for is to put ones nger on an everrecurring theme in Chestertons 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.
Quentin Lauer, in G. K. Chesterton: Philosopher Without Portfolio (1988), p. 77
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 oset certain evils in Britain. It is important
to keep in mind that whatever the misreadings of
fascism, Chesterton always had some quite specic
British problem in view when he praises Mussolini.
Robert Royal, on admiration by Chesterton of
Benito Mussolini and his inuence on Europe,
in The Pearl of Great Price, his Introduction
to The Resurrection of Rome (1930) in The
Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton (1990) by
Vol. XXI, p. 272
26
For Chesterton British public rhetoric was

more than a mere style: The motive is the desire to disguise a thing even when expressing it.
To his mind, the dictators words, even if his actions were as bad or worse than those of the parliamentarians, were morally and stylistically superior.
At least they said openly what was being done
openly. The British rhetoric, for Chesterton, was
one with the decayed British liberalism that allowed exploitation of workers by plutocrats who
were never rebuked by government or the courts.
If nothing else, Mussolinis language was a bracing
alternative.
Gazing back across the horrors of World War II,
it is hard for us to imagine how good men like
Chesterton, whatever their objections to British
liberalism, could admire Mussolini, though several prominent intellectuals and politicians did.
Many of us have family members or friends who
fought or died to stop the fascist darkness, and we
nd it dicult to sympathize with Chestertons desire to be fair to Mussolini. Mussolinis thuggish
violence, of course, Chesterton and others rejected. But their admiration was an index of the
scale of reform they thought needed.
Robert Royal, in The Pearl of Great Price,
his Introduction to The Resurrection of
Rome (1930) in The Collected Works of G.K.
Chesterton (1990) by Vol. XXI, p. 274
External links
The American Chesterton Society
An extensive collection of eText links
The Complete Father Brown online at the University of Adelaide
G. K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense Produced by EWTN - Real Audio Archives include 28
Episodes with an overview and quotes of Chesterton.
Works by G. K. Chesterton at Project Gutenberg
[1]
EXTERNAL LINKS
27
In its fundamental conception, as well as in many of the signicant details of its working out, Lord of the Rings is heavily
indebted to G. K. Chestertons now little read poem of 1911, The
Ballad of the White Horse. ~ Cristopher Clausen
Like Lord of the Rings, Chestertons poem is set in a heroic society

after the decay of a highly civilized imperial power King Alfred,
its hero, like Tolkien's Aragorn, is an idealized heroic gure who
roams around in humble disguise and is sometimes mistreated by
the ignorant. ~ Cristopher Clausen
The authors would like to join the demon Crowley in dedicating

this book to the memory of G. K. Chesterton. A man who knew
what was going on. ~ Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Behind every Chesterton sentence there was someone painting

with words, and it seemed to me that at the end of any particularly good sentence or any perfectly-put paradox, you could hear
the author, somewhere behind the scenes, giggling with delight.
~ Neil Gaiman
28
5 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES
Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses
5.1
Text
G. K. Chesterton Source:
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton?oldid=2087174 Contributors:
Nanobug, Kalki,
Lola~enwikiquote, Mksmith, Jeq, Paul A, Tobin Richard~enwikiquote, Achilles, RealGrouchy, Narsil, Rmhermen, Jarsonic,
ELApro, RPickman, Epigram Seeker, Cutler~enwikiquote, Eternity, 121a0012, Zhaladshar, BD2412, UDScott, LittleSmall~enwikiquote,
LeonardoRob0t, MeltBanana, Pandover978, InvisibleSun, Bernd in Japan~enwikiquote, Cheungpat, Fys, OneGyT, Peterklevy, Sceptre,
Cpburdett, Cbrown1023, Antiquary, Dinybot, CommonsDelinker, Newmanbe, Macspaunday, Triviaa, Cato, ChtitBot, Faux Jack Phoenix,
VolkovBot, Idioma-bot, RimBot, Mdd, Zgystardst, Yehudi, Mbarbier, Lisyrose, AnankeBot, Percival, Arbok, Lucia Bot, LaaknorBot,
Ningauble, Omnipaedista, JesseW, Spanglej, LouI, Thrissel, Surfeit of palfreys, Peter1c, Obuibo, CononOfSamos, Atu, Tomreal,
EleferenBot, Jsiracky, Wednesday 7pm, JRmoret, Mouagip, Demasi m, Robin Lionheart, Dhartung, Goose friend, Mmarre, AvicBot,
Areguni, BaseBot, DanielTom, Glaisher, Allixpeeke, Buckwheatloaf, JHobson3, Lawrence Calablaster, Dexbot, StamfordTomy, Y-S.Ko,
Odirjmm and Anonymous: 94
5.2
Images
File:2006-09-10_Heiliger_Georg_Detail.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/2006-09-10_Heiliger_

Georg_Detail.jpg License: Attribution Contributors: Own work Original artist: Axel Mauruszat
File:Aerial_view_from_Paramotor_of_Uffington_White_Horse_-_geograph.org.uk_-_305467.jpg Source:
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wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/Aerial_view_from_Paramotor_of_Uffington_White_Horse_-_geograph.org.uk_-_305467.jpg
License: CC BY-SA 2.0 Contributors: From geograph.org.uk Original artist: Dave Price
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Public domain Contributors:
Appletons Magazine:
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of_Gilbert_Keith_Chesterton.jpg License:
appletonsmagazin04newy#page/264/mode/2up Original artist: Paul Henry
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License:
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title='wikidata:Q4233718'><img
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5.2
Images
29
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at_work.jpg License:
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Wikidata-logo.svg/40px-Wikidata-logo.svg.png 2x' data-le-width='1050' data-le-height='590' /></a>
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Chesterton%2C_age_24_%281898%29.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
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G. K. Chesterton

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G. K.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (29 May 1874 14 June

Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who

Twelve Types (1903) Sir Walter Scott

Impartiality is a pompous name for indierence,

The simplication of anything is always sensational.

The Speaker (15 December 1900)

Varied Types (1903)

One of the deepest and strangest of all human moods

He is only a very shallow critic who cannot see an

There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this

courage to say, and that is a truism.

Varied Types (1903)

Bosh, he said, On what else is the whole world

The center of every mans existence is a dream.

Painful Fall of a Great Reputation

The riddle of life is simply this. For some mad

A man must be orthodox upon most things, or

For my friend said that he opened his intellect as

I swear to you, then, said MacIan, after a pause.

Tremendous Tries (1909), XVII: The Red

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

The Ball and the Cross, part IV: A Discussion

Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to

Alarms and Discursions (1910), 'Cheese,' p.

Either criticism is no good at all (a very defensible

There are two ways of dealing with nonsense in this world...

The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.

A mystic is a man who separates heaven and

ple are always wrong about what is wrong with

I believe what really happens in history is this:

Illustrated London News (11 August 1928)

Half the trouble about the modern man is that he is

Holding on to Romanticism in The Illustrated London News (2 May 1931)

A modern man may disapprove of some of his

Said of Benito Mussolini while comparing him

The Defendant (1901)

The cause which is blocking all progress today

revolutionaries, if the world is evil we must be

The Defendant (1901)

There runs a strange law through the length of

Humility is the luxurious art of reducing ourselves to a point, not

The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has

We all know that the 'divine glory of the ego' is

There is a road from the eye to the heart that

It is always the secure who are humble.

The most unfathomable schools and sages have

The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)

The truth is that it is our attitude towards children that is right,

There is always in the healthy mind an obscure

The humorous look of children is perhaps the most endearing of

regard them as marvels; we seem to be dealing with

The essential rectitude of our view of children lies in

The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting

Charles Dickens (1906)

Human beings, being children, have the childish wilfulness and

from the beginning, and will probably do it till

Ch 1 : The Dickens Period

All Things Considered (1908)

Ch 1 : The Dickens Period

An Essay on Two Cities

For fear of the newspapers politicians are dull,