“St Augustine, it would be generally agreed, has had a greater influence upon the history of dogma and upon religious thought and sentiment in Western Christendom than any other writer outside the canon of Scripture. It is easy to find at least one reason for this in the circumstances of the age during which his life was passed. From A.D. 350 till about A.D. 500 the vital powers of the ancient civilization were steadily declining, while at the same time the church was coming to social maturity with a number of insistent needs and demands which had not made themselves felt until full freedom of action had been attained. This period was followed by another, some 500 years in length, in which intellectual life at the higher levels was all but extinct in the West, and this epoch in its turn by one in which an adolescent Europe turned avidly for mental food to the masters nearest to hand and latest in time, the Latin writers of the imperial decline, who alone were available in the libraries of the age. These circumstances gave great importance and a new significance to a scattered group of teachers who had been the last to absorb the message of the ancient world while it was still to be heard, and who had therefore been the last to hand on the legacy of the past…”

David Knowles The Evolution of Medieval Thought [the metaphor of an “adolescent Europe” deserves attention but not respect].

“Now this modern refusal to undo what has been done is not only an intellectual fault; it is a moral fault also. It is not merely our mental inability to understand the mistake we have made. It is also our spiritual refusal to admit that we have made a mistake.”

G.K. Chesterton quoted in stand-alone box without further attribution in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #6 (July/August 2025)

“It may be a strange sight to see the blind leading the blind; but England provides a stranger. England shows us the blind leading the people who can see. And this again is an under-statement of the case.”

G.K. Chesterton in “A Glimpse of my Country” in Tremendous Trifles, 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 #4 (March/April 2025)

“We have seen the end of the age of Reason; and that we live in the age of Suggestion. Perhaps for the first time, the degradation of Man has been openly declared; in a theory that he can be persuaded without being convinced.”

G.K. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly Nov. 1, 1934, quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #2 (Nov./Dec. 2024)

“When Chesterton had been on the London literary scene for only a few years, both the general public and the literary critics started realizing his great versatility… ‘It has been suspected for some time,’ wrote an anonymous critic, ‘that his foible is omniscience.’ (Manchester Courier, Mar. 18, 1905).”

Dale Ahlquist “Tremendous Trifles” in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #3 (Jan./Feb. 2025)

“Our particular corner of Christendom can now be taught the history of every civilisation except its own.”

G.K. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly December 13, 1934, quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #2 (Nov./Dec. 2024)

“as G.K. Chesterton observes, ‘When we do translate things into English, they often only serve as a luminous argument for leaving them in Latin. Latin is Latin, and always says exactly what it means.’ While Latin was commonly taught to every school boy and girl in Mr. Chesterton’s day, alas it is no longer.”

Thomas Finke reviewing a translation of St. Augustine 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)