The Influence of G.K. Chesterton: Perfect Pith

G.K. Chesterton

Influences: We all have roots, and if one were to make the effort we could probably each make a genealogical tree of our ideas, identifying the people who have been our own chief influences.

The same holds true for the authors and thinkers whose books we have become familiar with. We certainly see it in politicians who frequently cite their influences by quoting the men and women who have inspired them.

C.S. Lewis, whose writings have been tremendously influential in the past century, had a circle of friends that included J.R.R. Tolkien. These friends were undoubtedly important people in his personal development. As for roots, Lewis made note of two major literary figures from a preceding generation: George MacDonald and G.K. Chesterton. MacDonald was a Scottish author, poet and minister who also happened to be a friend and mentor of Lewis Carroll. (Now you know the roots of The Chronicles of Narnia.)

As for Chesterton, he was a writer, philosopher, journalist, dramatist, orator, lay theologian and creative spirit. A contemporary of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, his Father Brown (Father Brown Mysteries) was equal to Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie's shrewd observers of the devious, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. (Who doesn't love a good mystery now and then?)

As a setup for an upcoming blog post I thought it appropriate to introduce Gilbert Keith Chesterton, the keen social critic and wit whose book The Everlasting Man made an impact on the young hot-headed atheist, C.S. Lewis.

* * * *
Here are some Chesterton quotes to help acquaint you with his mind and wit. Read them slowly, rather than as quickly as you can. 

"Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance."

"The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man."

"The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder."

"Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese."

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

"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions."

"What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but absence of self-criticism."

"I've searched all the parks in all the cities — and found no statues of Committees."

"There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great."

"The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen."

"One can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place."

From his essay on Tolstoy:
"The truth is that Tolstoy, with his immense genius, with his colossal faith, with his vast fearlessness and vast knowledge of life, is deficient in one faculty and one faculty alone. He is not a mystic; and therefore he has a tendency to go mad. Men talk of the extravagances and frenzies that have been produced by mysticism; they are a mere drop in the bucket. In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was logic. ...The only thing that has kept the race of men from the mad extremes of the convent and the pirate-galley, the night-club and the lethal chamber, has been mysticism — the belief that logic is misleading, and that things are not what they seem."

* * * *