Gilbert K. Chesterton
In 1936, shortly before his death, G. K. Chesterton received the title of Knight Grand Officer of the Order of St. Gregory the Great, a recognition that reflected the breadth of a career spanning poetry, philosophy, fiction, journalism, and literary criticism.
Born on 29 May 1874 in Kensington, London, Chesterton was educated at Colet Court, St Paul's School, University College London, and the Slade School of Fine Art. He worked across an unusually wide range of forms throughout his life, producing novels, essays, biographies, plays, screenplays, and autobiography, as well as working as an illustrator, caricaturist, historian, literary historian, and university teacher. Writing in English as a United Kingdom citizen, he authored works including The Napoleon of Notting Hill, The Man Who Was Thursday, The Club of Queer Trades, Orthodoxy, The Everlasting Man, and the crime fiction featuring the character Father Brown. His output as an opinion journalist and essayist ran alongside his longer works, and his engagement with literary criticism and philosophy gave his writing a distinctly argumentative character.
Chesterton died on 14 June 1936 in Beaconsfield. The title conferred by the Order of St. Gregory the Great in the final period of his life stands as a formal acknowledgment of his work across letters and public discourse.
Quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton
Gilbert K. Chesterton's insights on:
The humorous look of children is perhaps the most endearing of all the bonds that hold the Cosmos together.
We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners
The right kind of monarchy is one where everybody goes about with the permanent conviction that the king can do no wrong.
A dying monarchy is always one that has too much power, not too little; a dying religion always interferes more than it ought, not less.
The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.
We are Christians and Catholics not because we worship a key, but because we have passed a door and felt the wind that is the trumpet of liberty blow over the land of the living.
Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.
Instead of the machine being a giant to which the man is the pygmy, we must at last reverse the proportions until man is a giant to whom the machine is the toy.