4 Gilbert Keith Chesterton Quotes on Writing

Gilbert Keith Chesterton quotes on writing

26. Either criticism is no good at all (a very defensible position) or else criticism means saying about an author the very things that would have made him jump out of his boots.

88. A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

    Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

111. I cannot understand the people who take literature seriously; but I can love them, and I do. Out of my love I warn them to keep clear of this book. It is a collection of crude and shapeless papers upon current or rather flying subjects; and they must be published pretty much as they stand. They were written, as a rule, at the last moment; they were handed in the moment before it was too late, and I do not think that our commonwealth would have been shaken to its foundations if they had been handed in the moment after. They must go out now, with all their imperfections on their head, or rather on mine; for their vices are too vital to be improved with a blue pencil, or with anything I can think of, except dynamite. Their chief vice is that so many of them are very serious; because I had no time to make them flippant. It is so easy to be solemn; it is so hard to be frivolous.

193. This quotation actually comes from page 211 of Emile Cammaerts' book The Laughing Prophets (1937) in which he quotes Chesterton as having Father Brown say (in 'The Oracle of the Dog' from 1923): 'It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense.' Cammaerts then interposes his own analysis between further quotes from Father Brown: ''It's drowning all your old rationalism and scepticism, it's coming in like a sea; and the name of it is superstition.' The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything: 'And a dog is an omen and a cat is a mystery.'' Note that the remark about believing in anything is outside quotes - it is from Cammaerts. The American Chesterton Society has explained the origin of the phrase.