"Introduction"
The Defendant (1901)
Context: 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 effort 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.
G. K. Chesterton: Quotes about people
G. K. Chesterton was English mystery novelist and Christian apologist. Explore interesting quotes on people.
"The Case for the Ephemeral"
All Things Considered (1908)
Context: I cannot understand the people who take literature seriously; but I can love them, and I do. Out of my love I warn them to keep clear of this book. It is a collection of crude and shapeless papers upon current or rather flying subjects; and they must be published pretty much as they stand. They were written, as a rule, at the last moment; they were handed in the moment before it was too late, and I do not think that our commonwealth would have been shaken to its foundations if they had been handed in the moment after. They must go out now, with all their imperfections on their head, or rather on mine; for their vices are too vital to be improved with a blue pencil, or with anything I can think of, except dynamite.
Their chief vice is that so many of them are very serious; because I had no time to make them flippant. It is so easy to be solemn; it is so hard to be frivolous.
Child Psychology and Nonsense (15 October 1921)
Illustrated London News (3 June 1922)
“Whatever may be the reason, we all do warmly respect humility — in other people.”
"A Defence of Humilities"
The Defendant (1901)
Context: 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.
Opening lines
The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)
Context: The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children’s games 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 next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. They then go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun.
For 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.
"A Defence of Baby-Worship"
The Defendant (1901)
Context: 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 indifference or disdain. Our attitude towards children consists in a condescending indulgence, overlying an unfathomable respect.
"The Future of Democracy" http://www.online-literature.com/chesterton/what-i-saw-in-america/19/
What I Saw in America (1922)
Context: 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 history of ideas. If a sort of intellectual inquisition had been established, for the definition and differentiation of heresies, it would have been found that the original republican orthodoxy had suffered 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.
Source: Charles Dickens (1906), Ch 1 : "The Dickens Period"
Alarms and Discursions (1910), 'The New House,' pp. 161-162
“Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.”
Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton : The Illustrated London News, 1905-1907 (1986), p. 71
“I am not fighting a hopeless fight. People who have fought in real fights don't, as a rule.”
Patrick Dalroy in The Flying Inn (1914), p 295
The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) The Three Tools of Death
The Father Brown Mystery Series (1910 - 1927)
Illustrated London News (16 July 1910)
The Illustrated London News (14 December 1907)
The Dagger with Wings (1926)
“When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing — they believe in anything.”
This quotation actually comes from page 211 of Émile 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): "It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense." Cammaerts then interposes his own analysis between further quotes from Father Brown: "'It's drowning all your old rationalism and scepticism, it's coming in like a sea; and the name of it is superstition.' The first 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. The correct attribution was reportedly first traced by Pasquale Accardo. http://www.chesterton.org/ceases-to-worship/ It was also credited to Nigel Rees (as cited in First Things, 1997). http://books.google.com/books?id=NuQnAAAAYAAJ&q=%22The+first+effect+of+not+believing+in+God+is+to+believe+in+anything%22&dq=%22The+first+effect+of+not+believing+in+God+is+to+believe+in+anything%22&hl=en&ei=PSzcTvewIefx0gHqmrj0DQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAQ
Misattributed
On William Makepeace Thackeray Ch. II: The Great Victorian Novelists (p. 65)
The Victorian Age in Literature (1913)
Source: The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton http://books.google.com/books?id=9_m6AAAAIAAJ&q=%22Half+the+trouble+about+the+modern+man+is+that+he+is+educated+to+understand+foreign+languages+and+misunderstand+foreigners%22&pg=PA322#v=onepage (1936)