“Romances are more real than realistic novels, for various reasons, which all should easily perceive. For one thing, romance describes how ordinary people find life exciting. Whereas realistic fiction describes how odd or extraordinary people find life dull.”
G.K. Chesterton in The New York American reprinted in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #3 (Jan./Feb. 2025)
“There can be such a thing as a Waste of Time; but there could not be such a thing as a Waste of Eternity. So I suppose that the archangels read snippets and novelettes with a godlike innocence and pleasure.”
G.K. Chesterton in London Opinion April 2, 1904, quoted in “Waste” in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #3 (Jan./Feb. 2025)
“An Executive is a man employed to talk to visitors so that the other employees will have a chance to work.”
New York Daily Mirror quoted in “Other Suspects – II Quotes not by GKC” in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #3 (Jan./Feb. 2025)
“A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.”
G.K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy as header quotation on Tyler Blanski’s “My Name is Lazarus” conversion story in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #4 (March/April 2025)
“… to reassure us generally of the good intentions of the average German. Eulogies are pronounced on his good-humour and domesticity, and the warlike house-burners are praised as peaceful householders. It is, perhaps, admitted that there was something tactless in torturing the Belgians. But it is regarded as the exuberance of a young nation; and an indulgence is asked for such pastimes of Prussian officers on the principle that boys will be boys. That dark and watchful enemy, the sower of tares, is represented as having merely sown his wild oats.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News Jan. 1, 1916, quoted in “The Golden Key Chain GKC on Scripture Conducted by Peter Floriani” in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #3 (Jan./Feb. 2025)
“Don’t put it off until tomorrow. Tomorrow there may be a law against it.”
“Don’t know who said it” quoted in “Other Suspects – III Quotes not by GKC” in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #4 (March/April 2025)
“Like most moderately intelligent people, I read detective stories in preference to modern novels…”
G.K. Chesterton in The American Review February 1937, reprinted in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #3 (Jan./Feb. 2025)
“Art exists not only because life is too full of dreary things, but also because it is too full of delightful things. In existence delightful things rush by us so that we have no time to see them.”
G.K. Chesterton in Speaker April 22, 1905 quoted in unbylined “Art and Thought” compilation in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #4 (March/April 2025)