Literary Birthday – 29 May – G.K. Chesterton

G.K. Chesterton was born 29 May 1874, and died 14 June 1936.

G.K. Chesterton Quotes

1. Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
2. The difference between the poet and the mathematician is that the poet tries to get his head into the heavens while the mathematician tries to get the heavens into his head.
3. The way to love anything is to realise that it may be lost.
4. What fairy tales give the child is his first 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.
5. Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
6. The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.
7. There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.
8. Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of ideas. He is acquainted with ideas, and moves among them like a lion-tamer. Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are most dangerous is the man of no ideas. The man of no ideas will find the first idea fly to his head like wine to the head of a teetotaller.
9. To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
10. A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
11. People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are.
12. There’s a lot of difference between listening and hearing.
13. The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say.
14. The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs.
15. We … are all in the same boat, upon a stormy sea. We owe to each other a terrible and tragic loyalty.
16. Madmen never have doubts.

G.K. Chesterton was an English writer. He wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems, including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels, and two hundred short stories, including a popular series featuring the priest-detective, Father Brown.

Source for Image

by Amanda Patterson

Please click here for our Literary Birthday Calendar