Gilbert Keith Chesterton died 14 June 1936. I just came across several excellent quotes honoring this great man:
Chesterton is dead! That is to say and
say
Englishry shrunken; death upon a day
was not content with More but took
his heir.
~Robert Farren: ‘Chesterton.’
+ + +
“IT seems to me that Gilbert Chesterton at his baptism was visited by three fairies. Two good and one evil. The two good fairies were the fairy of fecundity of speech and the fairy of wide appreciation. The bad fairy was struck dead as she entered the church---and served her right. He was blessed in knowing nothing of the acerbities which bite into the life of writing men.”
~Hilaire Belloc: Gilbert Chesterton in English Letters.
+ + +
“HIS mind was oceanic, subject indeed to a certain restriction of repeated phrase and manner, but in no way restricted as to the action of the mind. He swooped upon an idea like an eagle, tore it with active beak into its constituent parts and brought out the heart of it. If ever a man analyzed finally and conclusively Chesterton did so.”
~Hilaire Belloc: Gilbert Chesterton in English Letters.
+ + +
“WE are in some danger today of underestimating our debt to Mr. Chesterton, of forgetting the impact which his books made on the minds of young men who were infected by the fallacy of Victorian rationalism. In those distant days many people still cherished the futile hope of reconstructing a positive ethical system on the basis of mere negation. Mr. Chesterton’s destructive criticism of the Huxleys, Brandlaughs and Haeckels of our youth was as devastating as it was brilliant, and its value would be more widely appreciated today if it had not been so completely effective.”
~Arnold Lunn: Now I See.
