‘The Cosmic Patriot’: GK Chesterton’s Birthday

Today (May 29) is the anniversary of the 1874 birth of one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century and the modern age, Englishman GK Chesterton.

Among his many excellent works are Orthodoxy, The Ball and the Cross, the Fr. Brown mysteries, The Everlasting Man, biographies of fellow great writers and saints, The Man Who Was Thursday, The Flying Inn, Ballad of the White Horse, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and All Things Considered. Chesterton foresaw the problems of a Muslim mass migration to and takeover of England many decades before it occurred. He cut through the propaganda of Communism when so much of the literary and political world was becoming Communist. He defended democratic processes while calling out the corruption in elections and other political operations. He stood up for God and miracles and the Church, even as the world around him went sick with skepticism and atheism.

Few writers or thinkers have more profoundly impacted me personally than Chesterton, and reading his essays and newspaper articles while I was in college helped shape and direct my journalistic aspirations and writing. Unlike so many other influential writers of the 20th century, Chesterton never graduated from college, he was a journalist. In my opinion, this contributed to his genius.

Free from so many of the pedantic flaws and unrealistic philosophizing of academics, Chesterton was brilliant enough to astonish academics while still being an engaging and memorable read for the average individual. He made mistakes like any other man, but he was more grounded in reality, more connected with the average man, than most influential writers are. A few key facts about his life:

“Born in London, G.K. Chesterton was educated at St. Paul’s, but [graduated from] college. He went to art school. In 1900, he was asked to contribute a few magazine articles on art criticism, and went on to become one of the most prolific writers of all time. 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 some two hundred short stories, including a popular series featuring the priest-detective, Father Brown.

In spite of his literary accomplishments, he considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4,000 newspaper essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly…Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology. His style is unmistakable, always marked by humility, consistency, paradox, wit, and wonder. His writing remains as timely and as timeless today as when it first appeared.”

He was sadly unable to have children, but he was very devoted to and dependent on his wife Frances. A devout Christian whose beliefs helped bring CS Lewis to the faith, in 1922 Chesterton became a Catholic and soon became one of the most devoted sons of the Church. Joyous, humorous, and fanciful, a man who professed belief in fairies as well as saints, a man who defended the existence of Santa Claus alongside the existence of God, he was one of those unique and lovable personalities who seem vitally alive and real long after his physical death.

Below are a few of the witty, insightful, inspiring, or amusing quotes from the great GK Chesterton:

“Do not be so open minded that your brains fall out.”

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

“A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”

‘“We hate dying,” said Turnbull, with composure, “but we hate you even more. This is a successful revolution.”’

“So Faustus, in his fur coat, is carried away by little black imps; and serve him right for being an Intellectual.“

“It is impossible to be just to the Catholic Church.  The moment men cease to pull against it, they feel a tug toward it.  The moment they cease to shout it down, they begin to listen to it with pleasure.  The moment they try to be fair to it, they begin to be fond of it.”

“America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just. It certainly does condemn anarchism, and it does also by inference condemn atheism, since it clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived.” [Chesterton, though a very loyal and enthusiastic Englishman, greatly admired the U.S. Founders’ philosophy.]

“For among the poor there are still exaggerated characters; they do not go to the Universities to be universified.”

“Neither reason nor faith will ever die; for men would die if deprived of either.”

“Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.”

“To the orthodox there must always be a case for revolution; for in the hearts of men God has been put under the feet of Satan. In the upper world hell once rebelled against heaven. But in this world heaven is rebelling against hell. For the orthodox there can always be a revolution; for a revolution is a restoration. At any instant you may strike a blow for the perfection which no man has seen since Adam.”

“Brothers at arms,” said Alfred, /“On this side lies the foe; /Are slavery and starvation flowers, /That you should pluck them so?… /To sweat a slave to a race of slaves, /To drink up infamy? /No, brothers, by your leave, I think /Death is a better ale to drink, /And by all the stars of Christ that sink, /The Danes shall drink with me.”

“The world is not a lodging-house at Brighton, which we are to leave because it is miserable. It is the fortress of our family, with the flag flying on the turret, and the more miserable it is the less we should leave it. The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more. All optimistic thoughts about England and all pessimistic thoughts about her are alike reasons for the English patriot. Similarly, optimism and pessimism are alike arguments for the cosmic patriot.”

“The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right.”

“People first paid honour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.”

“Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.”

“I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible since. I left the nurse guardian of tradition and democracy, and I have not found any modern type so sanely radical or so sanely conservative.”

“He is a sane man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head.”

“Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.”

“Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.”

“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.”

“The men of the East may spell the stars, /And times and triumphs mark, /But the men signed of the cross of Christ /Go gaily in the dark.”

“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father.”

“Communism, anyhow our Communism, would not be the rule of the poor, nor even the unruliness of the poor; but only the extension of the existing unruliness of the rich.”

“The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.”

“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.”

“We shall soon be in a world in which a man may be howled down for saying that two and two make four.”

“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”