Your favorite Chesterton quote?

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Charlemagne_II said:
Trishie’s comment on Shaw and Chesterton reminded me of a verse I once wrote.

Dining Gilbert Chesterton
spilled sauce and ale his big vest on.
He carved his Kant,
mashed his Marx
and buttered his Bertrand Russell.
Then he shouted down the corridor
for some oyster and some mussel.
But last of all, with sweating brow
he opened wide his jaw,
and for dessert he gulped a slice
of good old Bernard Shaw.
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Have you tried writing any Clerlihews about Chesterton? If you do you can submit them to Gilbert Magazine for publication. I’m sure they’d love see this poem, too, of course. Too funny and spot on! :clapping:
 
Alan, Della

Thanks for the compliments. I submitted this verse to Gilbert Magazine several years ago, but apparently nobody noticed … or perhaps it rubbed someone the wrong way?

A clever cartoonist might have had fun illustrating it?
 
Charlemagne_II said:
Alan, Della

Thanks for the compliments. I submitted this verse to Gilbert Magazine several years ago, but apparently nobody noticed … or perhaps it rubbed someone the wrong way?

A clever cartoonist might have had fun illustrating it?
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Try again. It might have gotten lost in the shuffle. Dale Ahlquist (president American Chesterton Society) would be the perfect person to do the cartoon–if you could persuade him to, that is. 🙂

To keep in the spirit of the thread another GKC quote: “A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”
 
DELLA

Thank you very much for the suggestion. Another from G.K.:

“When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world we have not made. In other words, when we step into the family we step into a fairy-tale.”
 
Oh wow there are so many great ones to pick just one!

Well off the top of my head, and without going to my book self and going through all the underlined portions I have marked in his books; I have always liked this one:

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

God bless
 
Charlemagne_II said:
DELLA

Thank you very much for the suggestion. Another from G.K.:

“When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world we have not made. In other words, when we step into the family we step into a fairy-tale.”
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This quote is from Chapter 14 of his book, Heretics. You can read it here starting on page 179-- XIV On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family::

questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=13685909

Dale Ahlquist said in his book The Apostle of Common Sense (page 41) that it has been suggested that this chapter is “the quintessential Chesterton essay, that if we could keep only one piece of his writing and everything else that Chesterton ever wrote were to be burned or buried, this is the chapter we should keep.”
 
I also like his tribute to Pope St Pius X in the Illustrated London News[August 20,1914] - The Peasant who became a Pope.
As has been pointed out, with subtle power and all proper delicacy, in numberless liberal and large-minded journals, the great and good priest now dead had all the prejudices of a peasant. He had a prejudice to the effect that the mystical word “Yes” should be distinguished from the equally unfathomable expression "No".
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Our present Pope shows signs of the same prejudice. 😃
 
too many gems to choose from, but the bit about the determinist not being able to say “thank you” for passing the mustard is what got me hooked.

“You may use the language of liberty, if you like, about materialistic teaching, but it is obvious that this is just as inapplicable to it as a whole as the same language when applied to a man locked up in a mad-house. You may say, if you like, that the man is free to think himself a poached egg. But it is surely a more massive and important fact that if he is a poached egg he is not free to eat, drink, sleep, walk, or smoke a cigarette. Similarly you may say, if you like, that the bold determinist speculator is free to disbelieve in the reality of the will. But it is a much more massive and important fact that he is not free to raise, to curse, to thank, to justify, to urge, to punish, to resist temptations, to incite mobs, to make New Year resolutions, to pardon sinners, to rebuke tyrants, or even to say “thank you” for the mustard.”
 
My favorite Chesterton quote is actually about one of my favorite saints, Saint Francis.
He discribed Saint Francis as “a person who would appologise to the cat and sincerely mean it!”
For us Americans to get the joke, in England someone who appologises to the cat would be someone who is shy, a milk-toast, a wimp. GK wouldn’t have seen him as that but, rather as someone who would shock our sensibilities by actually doing just that.
I had an ironic thought ala GK while sitting in the sun in the yard (something GK liked to do) what if GK managed to by some miracle get GB Shaw into heaven:eek: a place where he’d probably be miserable for all eternity. Wouldn’t that be the final laugh?:highprayer:
 
scottywolf777 said:
My favorite Chesterton quote is actually about one of my favorite saints, Saint Francis.
He discribed Saint Francis as “a person who would appologise to the cat and sincerely mean it!”
For us Americans to get the joke, in England someone who appologises to the cat would be someone who is shy, a milk-toast, a wimp. GK wouldn’t have seen him as that but, rather as someone who would shock our sensibilities by actually doing just that.
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I didn’t know I had that in common with St. Francis! That’s good to know–it’s means I’m not crazy. Just now, as it happens, we are treating one of our cats for ear mites, which are making him and us miserable. When we get done (after I’ve found him where he’s run off to hide) I apologize for putting him through the treatments and try to explain why we have to do it. He doesn’t understand my words, of course, but he does understand my tone and trusts us enough to know we don’t mean to hurt him. Makes one stop and think, doesn’t it?
I had an ironic thought ala GK while sitting in the sun in the yard (something GK liked to do) what if GK managed to by some miracle get GB Shaw into heaven:eek: a place where he’d probably be miserable for all eternity. Wouldn’t that be the final laugh?:highprayer:
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Yes, GBS would find heaven miserable, especially with GKC there to tell him: “I told you so” for all eternity! LOL!

Some of my favorite Chesterton quotes come from the Fr. Brown stories. Here’s one:

“People like frequent laughter…but I don’t think they like the permanent smile. Cheerfulness without humour is a very trying thing…The religion of cheerfulness is a cruel religion.” The Father Brown Stories, The Three Tools of Death.
 
I recall a story of Chesterton and Shaw being guests on a BBC show. When told they could discuss anything they wished except religion and politics both walked out. They contended that there was nothing else worth talking about. 👍
 
“The decay of society is praised by artists as the decay of a corpse is praised by worms.” G.K. Chesterton
 
“Men are ruled, at this minute by the clock, by liars who refuse them news, and by fools who cannot govern.” G.K. Chesterton, 1917
 
“Nothing really changes we are what we are until the day that we die”-Larry Norman 60’s Christian rocker based on Ecclesiastes
I know it’s not Chesterton but, it was my reponse to that last quote. Things haven’t changed much since 1917 have they?
 
“The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right.”

“I admit that murder must be classed among acts distinctly improper and, indeed, morally wrong. But suicide seems to me the supreme blasphemy against God and man and beast and vegetables; the attack not upon a life, but upon life itself; the murder of the universe.”
 
I quote Peter Kreeft quoting Chesterton:

When asked what the biggest barrier to converting people to Christianity, Chesterton replied simply, “Christians.”
😛
 
Reminds me of the essay he was supposed to write on the subject “What’s Wrong with the World?” His two-word reply: “I am.”
 
Every man who ever knocked on a brothel door was really looking for God.
 
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