"If he will produce sublime architecture"

“SUPPOSE a man says: “Why am I not free to produce a sublime architectural effect with thirty-seven butter-tubs, three gas pipes, and a packing case? Why should I not make beauty out of these?” There seems to be no answer except to say, “Why not, indeed?” If he will produce sublime architecture out of them, I shall not complain of the sublimity. If he will make beauty from them, I shall not condemn them for contriving to be beautiful…. My attitude toward the experiment may be described as one of patient expectancy—of hope not unmingled with doubt. I am waiting for the moment when the pagoda of tubs shall strike my soul like a thunderbolt out of the sky; when I shall stagger with admiration at some perfect poise and balance of pipes and packing-cases which I had never foreseen even in my dreams. I say nothing of that inspiring moment of my life, except that it has not yet come.”

~G.K. Chesterton: Illustrated London News, 2/11/22.

 

 

"Vision of worthlessness"

“TOUCHING this matter of time, there does seem to be a rather peculiar quality about modern painters. I have never understood why painters are so much more terrified than poets or prose writers of the notion of being behind the times. It seems probable, at present, that they will really find themselves behind the times. They will find themselves the last people left alive, to believe in this silly nineteenth century notion of being in advance of the times. All the thinkers who really think, and all the theorists whose theories seriously count, are growing more and more skeptical about the very existence of progress, and certainly about the desirability of this sort of self-swallowing and suicidal kind of progress. The notion that every generation proves worthless the last generation, and is in its turn proved worthless by the next generation, is an everlasting vista and vision of worthlessness which is fortunately itself worthless.”

~G.K. Chesterton: Are the Artists Going Mad?

 

 

"The infernal workshop"

‘A crime,’ he said slowly, ‘is like any other work of art. Don’t look surprised; crimes are by no means the only works of art that come from the infernal workshop. But every work of art, divine or diabolic, has one indispensable mark – I mean, that the centre of it is simple, however much the fulfilment may be complicated...'

~G.K. Chesterton: The Innocence of Father Brown, III. The Queer Feet.

"The great paradox"

“IT IS the great paradox of the modern world, the fact that at the very time when the world decided that people should not be coerced about their form of religion, it also decided that they should be coerced about their form of education…. It is obviously unfair and unreasonable that secular education should forbid one man to say a religion is true and allow another man to say it is untrue. It is obviously essential to justice that unsectarian education should cut both ways; and that if the orthodox must cut out the statement that man has a divine origin, the materialist must cut out the statement that he has a wholly and exclusively bestial origin.”

~G.K. Chesterton: Illustrated London News, 8/8/25.

"Happiness is..."

“HAPPINESS is a state of the soul; a state in which our natures are full of the wine of an ancient youth, in which banquets last for ever, and roads lead everywhere, where all things are under the exuberant leadership of faith, hope, and charity.”

~G.K. Chesterton: Charles Dickens.

Chesterton on Liberals & Conservatives

“THE Liberal Party now consists entirely of leaders—or rather misleaders.”
 — The Well and the Shallows, 1935.

“A CLOCK that has stopped is at least right twice a day; the real philosophic Conservative is right with the same regularity as clock that has stopped.”
 — The Speaker, 10/19/01.

“BOTH modern parties believe in a government by the few; the only difference is whether it is the Conservative few or the Progressive few.”
 — What’s Wrong with the World, 1910.

“THE Conservative Party suddenly becomes the Liberal Party the instant it is liberated from responsibility. The Liberal Party suddenly becomes the Conservative Party the instant it has anything to conserve.”
 — Illustrated London News, 2/4/11.

“WHEN Conservatives, Liberals, and Socialists all agree, it is time for the larger and more harmless part of mankind to look after its pockets.”
 — Illustrated London News, 4/5/13.

“THE whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes being corrected.”
 — Illustrated London News, 4/19/24.

Chesterton on Politicians

“REPRESENTATIVE government has many minor disadvantages, one of them being that it is never representative.”
 — Charles Dickens.

"THE trouble with modern England is not how many or how few people vote. It is that, however many people vote, a small ring of administrators do what they please."
— Quoted in Colonist, 10/27/09

"I KNOW that most politicians are engaged in trying to imitate the other politicians, which cannot be considered as a school of virtue."
— Illustrated London News, 7/9/10

“I WOULD rather a boy learnt in the roughest school the courage to hit a politician, or gained in the hardest school the learning to refute him – rather than that he should gain in the most enlightened school the cunning to copy him.”
— Illustrated London News, 8/31/12

“THE modern representative not only does not represent his constituents—he does not even represent himself.”
 — Illustrated London News, 8/31/12.

"THE men whom the people ought to choose to represent them are too busy to take the jobs. But the politician is waiting for it. He’s the pestilence of modern times. What we should try to do is make politics as local as possible. Keep the politicians near enough to kick them. The villagers who met under the village tree could also hang their politicians to the tree. It’s terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hung today."
 — Interview with Cleveland Press, 3/1/21

“POLITICIANS have to live in the future, because they know they have done nothing but evil in the past.”
 — Illustrated London News, 6/10/33.