G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

On this date in 1936, G(ilbert) K(eith) Chesterton passed away. G. K. Chesterton was a journalist, scholar, novelist and short story writer (including a series of detective stories featuring the priest-detective, Father Brown), poet, philosopher, and Christian apologetic.

From today's Universalis website:

"On this day in 1936 died G.K. Chesterton, writer and journalist. His writings – stories, essays, poems, books, journalism – are infused with an unequalled joy and love of truth.

"In youth, he went through a crisis of nihilistic pessimism and it was his recovery from this that led him to God and ultimately to conversion. 'The Devil made me a Catholic,' he said – meaning that it was the experience of evil and nothingness that convinced him of the goodness and sanity of the world and his creator. His poem 'The Ballade of a Suicide' celebrates the salvific value of ordinary things; his novel, 'The Man who was Thursday,' narrates the fight for sanity in an insane world and ponders the paradox of God; and 'Orthodoxy,' written long before he became a Catholic, highlights orthodoxy not as a dead and static thing but as the only possible point of equilibrium between crazy heresies any one of which would drive us mad.

"He took part in all the major controversies of his age, and was a lifelong adversary and friend of socialists and atheists such as George Bernard Shaw. These controversies were conducted with passion but with unfailing charity: he never sought to defeat his opponents, only to defeat their ideas. He would never cheat to score a point: and his love for the people he fought against is something that all controversialists should imitate, however hard it may be."

Some quotes from Chesterton:

"An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered."

"To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it."

"Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision."

"To hurry through one's leisure is the most unbusiness-like of actions."

"Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God."

"America is the only country ever founded on a creed."

"The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man."

"It is hard to make government representative when it is also remote."

"The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people."

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried."

"These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own."

"All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive."

For more information:

American Chesterton Society:
     American Chesterton Society
(Note: Dale Ahlquist is president of the American Chesterton Society, and he is the host of "G.K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense," which can be seen on EWTN)

Martin Ward: G. K. Chesterton (including a brief biography and links to many of his works):
      Martin Ward: G. K. Chesterton