“Those pairs could only have been made by one who saw before him the Soul of Boot…”
John Galsworthy regarding a particular bootmaker’s samples in William Bennett The Book of Virtues
“Students of popular science… are always insisting that Christianity and Buddhism are very much alike, especially Buddhism”
G.K. Chesterton “Art and Religion” reprinted in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #2 (Nov./Dec. 2024)
“A man is drunk when he feels sophisticated and can’t pronounce it.”
Joe Sullivan 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)
“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)
“Work while you work,/ Play while you play;/ One thing each time,/ That is the way. All that you do,/ Do with your might;/ Things done by halves/ Are not done right.”
Complete text of “Work while you work” from McGuffey’s Primer, in William Bennett The Book of Virtues
“There are two kinds of ascetics in the world… The first ascetic surrenders things because he could enjoy them; he is the Catholic monk. The second ascetic surrenders things because he could not enjoy them; he is the Puritan. The first is in the tradition of the Pagan sacrifices; he sacrifices the best beast to his gods. The second slaughters only black beetles upon the altar. Briefly, the first offers to give up his goods, the second offers to give up his bads, to heaven.”
G.K. Chesterton in Independent Review January 1906, quoted in “Joy” in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #2 (Nov./Dec. 2024)
“one fact which sticks out like a spike as huge as the Matterhorn is the fact that the Christianity which created Christendom did definitely declare that its religious founder, unlike other religious founders, had risen from the dead…. Nobody ever said that Confucius rose from the dead; and nobody would have been more legitimately annoyed at the notion than Confucius.”
G.K. Chesterton “Resurrection” in G.K.’s Weekly April 9, 1936 reprinted in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #4 (March/April 2025) [said after ridiculing the idea that only those without religion can compare the merits of all religions, which he notes wouldn’t work well in music or science]