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"If people must not be taught religion, they might be taught reason, philosophy. If the State must not teach them to pray it might teach them to think. And when I say that children should be taught to think I do not mean (like many moderns) that they should be taught to doubt; for the two processes are not only not the same, but are in many ways opposite. To doubt is only to destroy; to think is to create."
– G.K. Chesterton
Quoted by Dale Ahlquist in his book The Complete Thinker.
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"The refusal of God to explain His design is itself a burning hint of His design. The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man."
– G.K. Chesterton
From his essay "The Book of Job." Collected in the book In Defense of Sanity.
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"We do not really want a religion that is right where we are right. What we want is a religion that is right where we are wrong. In these current fashions it is not really a question of the religion allowing us liberty; but (at the best) of the liberty of allowing us a religion. These people merely take the modern mood, with much in it that is amiable and much that is anarchical and much that is merely dull and obvious, and then require any creed to be cut down to fit that mood. But the mood would exist even without the creed. They say they want a religion to be practical, when they would be practical without any religion. They say they want a religion acceptable to science, when they would accept the science even if they did not accept the religion. They say they want a religion like this because they are like this already. They say they want it, when they mean that they could do without it."
– G.K. Chesterton
From his book The Catholic Church and Conversion.
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"Some people have an instinctive itch of irritation against the word 'authority.' Either they suppose that authority is a pompous name for mere bullying, or else, at the best, they think that mere bullying is an excess of authority. Tyranny is the opposite of authority. For authority simply means right; and nothing is authoritative except what somebody has a right to do, and therefore is right in doing. It often happens in this imperfect world that he has the right to do it and not the power to do it. But he cannot have a shred of authority if he merely has the power to do it and not the right to do it.... To abuse authority is to attack authority. A policeman is no longer a policeman when he is bribed privately to arrest an innocent man; he is a private criminal. He is not exaggerating authority; he is reducing it to nothing."
– G.K. Chesterton
From the essay, "True and False Comparisons"
This essay can be found in the newly released Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 37.
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"I grew up in a world in which the Protestants, who had just proved that Rome did not believe the Bible, were excitedly discovering that they did not believe the Bible themselves."
– G.K. Chesterton
From his book, The Catholic Church and Conversion.
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"I am not at all disturbed about the future of the Faith; but I am disturbed about the future of the doubters."
– G.K. Chesterton
From the essay, "The Rout of Reason", collected in the book In Defense of Sanity.
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"For, given any freedom of that sort, the State does become one vast Foundling Hospital. If families will not be responsible for their own children then officials will be responsible for other people's children.... The total control of human life will pass to the State; and it will be a very Totalitarian State."
– G.K. Chesterton
From the essay "An Alternative to the Family", found in the newly released Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 37.
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"I despise Birth-Control because it is a weak and wobbly and cowardly thing. It is not even a step along the muddy road they call Eugenics; it is a flat refusal to take the first and most obvious step along the road of Eugenics. Once grant that their philosophy is right, and their course of action is obvious; and they dare not take it; they dare not even declare it... The obvious course for Eugenists is to act towards babies as they act towards kittens. Let all the babies be born; and then let us drown those we do not like."
– G.K. Chesterton
From his book The Well and the Shallows.
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"A common hesitation in our day touching the use of extreme convictions is a sort of notion that extreme convictions, especially upon cosmic matters, have been responsible in the past for the thing which is called bigotry. But a very small amount of direct experience will dissipate this view. In real life the people who are most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all."
– G.K. Chesterton
From his book Heretics.
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"Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it."
– G.K. Chesterton
Quoted in G.K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense by Dale Ahlquist
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"Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God."
– G.K. Chesterton
From his book Christendom in Dublin.
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"A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it."
– G.K. Chesterton
From his book The Everlasting Man.
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"I read the astounding statement that the Catholic Church regards sex as having the nature of sin. How marriage can be a sacrament if sex is a sin, or why it is the Catholics who are in favour of birth and their foes who are in favour of birth control, I will leave the critic to worry out for himself."
– G.K. Chesterton
From his book Saint Thomas Aquinas.
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"I am incurably convinced that the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid."
– G.K. Chesterton
From his Autobiography.
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"The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice."
– G.K. Chesterton
Quoted in G.K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense by Dale Ahlquist.
The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton
The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton is an ongoing project, edited by many of the most prominent Chesterton scholars in the world, including Dale Ahlquist, Denis Conlon, George Marlin, Lawrence Clipper, and many others. These handsome editions include explanatory footnotes, introductory essays, and much more. See individual titles for full details.
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The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton
Volume 1
Contains three of Chesterton's most influential works. In Heretics, Chesterton sets forth one of the most telling critiques of contemporary religious notions ever. The Blatchford Controversies are the spirited public debate which led to the writing of Heretics. Then in Orthodoxy, Chesterton accepts the challenge of his opponents and sets forth his own reasons for accepting the Christian Faith.
Available in Softcover
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The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton
Volume 2
This volume contains three of Chesterton's greatest classics on Catholic philosophy and spirituality. It includes The Everlasting Man, possibly his greatest work, which gives an Incarnational view of world history, and two of the finest biographies written of St. Thomas and St. Francis.
Available in Softcover
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The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton
Volume 3
A collection of five powerful essays by Chesterton in defense of Catholicism and the Catholic Church. Unique because most of his writings do not deal specifically with religion or the Catholic Church. However, here he directly addresses the teachings of the Church and objections to them. It also includes his inspiring and moving commentary on the Stations of the Cross, along with the drawings of the stations he used for his meditations. Another essay explains why he converted to Catholicism.
As with all of his writings, these are just as germane today as they were in his time. Today's reader can revel in the same delight GKC's contemporaries felt, for he always presented the Church's best face to an antagonistic and indifferent world. The introduction and footnotes are written by another convert and author, James J. Thompson, Jr.
Available in Softcover
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The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton
Volume 4
The first of two volumes devoted to Chesterton's political, sociological, and economical writings. Gilbert K. Chesterton staunchly opposed any assaults by the trendsetters on the common man.
Available in Softcover
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The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton
Volume 5
The second volume is devoted to Chesterton's political, sociological and economic writings. Throughout his life Chesterton struggled against scepticism and selfishness and defended the interests of the common man. Chesterton defended democratic principles, individual freedom, property holders and small businessmen in his work The Outline of Sanity because he was convinced that capitalism and socialism were oligarchies that would suffocate the individual. There was hardly ever a more fierce, more romantic, more combative defender of private property in the history of Christianity than G.K. Chesterton. He was an ardent foe not only of socialism, but also of that form of collectivised capitalism that would ape socialism by creating the "welfare state".
Also in this volume, Dr. John McCarthy examines and edits Chesterton's polemical volumes and pamphlets published during World War I, including a posthumous volume entitled The End of the Armistice. This collection demonstrates that early on Chesterton recognized the evil of Nazism. Chesterton prophesied that Hitler was bent on destroying the Jews and Poland.
Available in Softcover
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The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton
Volume 6
T.S. Eliot, Evelyn Waugh, C.S. Lewis and W.H. Auden all recognized Chesterton as a giant literary figure. This volume contains G.K. Chesterton's earliest and greatest novels. The reader will encounter characters that defend with great vigor the diginity of the person and fundamental Christian beliefs. This volume is graced with Chesterton's own drawings and photos, as well as maps.
Available in Softcover
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The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton
Volume 7
This seventh volume of the Collected works of G.K. Chesterton brings together three of this most acclaimed works of fiction, with introduction and notes by Chesterton scholar Iain Benson. A must for serious fans of Chesterton, this features the same quality and sturdy binding as the other volumes in this series.
Available in Softcover
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The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton
Volume 8
The is the second volume of Chesterton's novels in this series of his Collected Works. (Volume VI is the other book of novels.) Besides his well-known philosophical-theological writings, Chesterton's fiction is very popular (Father Brown Mysteries, The Man Who Was Thursday, etc.) and among those who regarded him as a great literary figure are T.S. Eliot, Evelyn Waugh, C.S. Lewis and W.H. Auden. The reader will encounter characters in these novels that defend with great vigor the dignity of the person and fundamental Christian beliefs.
"Chesterton leaves a permanent claim upon our loyalty to see that the work that he did in his time is continued in ours."
–T.S. Eliot -
The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton
Volume 10: Collected Poetry, Part I
The first of two volumes of Chesterton's poetry, many of which have never been published before. Mackey, a Chesterton expert, has been collecting GKC's poems over a period of years and he has arranged them by subject. There are also alphabetical indexes by title and by the first line to aid the reader.
Chesterton was the poet of the ordinary, denying that anything was or could be uninteresting; his verse celebrates lamp-posts and daisies and railway stations. Above all he gave unceasing thanks for "The Great Minimum", that gift of mere existence, to which any added joy is almost superfluous. As in his other writings, Chesterton's poems carried his rollicking yet devastating barbs launched at the cant and humbug of the planners, politicians and self-appointed reformers of his day.
The first of two volumes of Chesterton's poetry, many of which have never been published before. Mackey, a Chesterton expert, has been collecting GKC's poems over a period of years and he has arranged them by subject. There are also alphabetical indexes by title and by the first line to aid the reader.
Chesterton was the poet of the ordinary, denying that anything was or could be uninteresting; his verse celebrates lamp-posts and daisies and railway stations. Above all he gave unceasing thanks for "The Great Minimum", that gift of mere existence, to which any added joy is almost superfluous. As in his other writings, Chesterton's poems carried his rollicking yet devastating barbs launched at the cant and humbug of the planners, politicians and self-appointed reformers of his day.
Available in Softcover
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The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton
Volume 10: Collected Poetry, Part 2
The long-awaited second volume of Chesterton's collected poetry is now here. Edited by Denis J. Conlon, this book picks up where the last volume left off, continuing the complete collection of the great Christian writer's verse with all poems, both published and uncollected, until 1900. A third volume covering 1901-1936 is forthcoming.
Illustrated with Chesterton's own sketches, and including poems written when he was a child, this fascinating collection is an essential addition to any Chestertonian's library. Includes Greybeards at Play and Clerihews. With an index of first lines, titles, and refrains.
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The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton
Volume 10: Collected Poetry, Part 3
Throughout his life, G.K. Chesterton penned nearly a thousand poems that described his reaction to people and events.
This volume contains the third part of the great man's collected poems. We are pleased and honored that two of the leading Chestertonians, Mr. Aidan Mackey and Dr. Denis J. Conlon, have collaborated in the assembling of these volumes to which they have contributed many previously uncollected poems.
This Volume X, Part III, is the final installment of Conlon's research: turn-of-the-century poems discovered after the publication of Part II and the poetry of the subsequent years up to 1936 not included in the previous books.
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The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton
Volume 11
This volume includes the collected plays of G. K. Chesterton, his controversial writings on Bernard Shaw (who referred to GKC as a colossal genius), and a bibliography. Many of the items appear for the first time in book form. Among his plays included here are: "The Wild Knight", "Magic", "The Judgment of Dr. Johnson", "The Turkey and the Turk", and "The Surprise". Among his writings on Shaw included here are: "Do We Agree?" (a debate), "How I Found the Superman", "Sorry, I'm Shaw", and "A Salute to the Last Socialist".
Chesterton himself gives the best summary of what we found in this volume when he says of Shaw: "I have argued with him on almost every subject in the world; and we have always been on opposite sides without affectation or animosity. I have defended the institution of the family against his Platonic fancies about the state ... institutions of beef and beer against his hygienic severity of vegetarianism and total abstinence.... It is necessary to disagree with him as much as I do in order to admire him as I do; and I am proud of him as a foe even more than as a friend."
Available in Softcover
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The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton
Volume 12
G.K. Chesterton, one of the most prolific writers of the 20th century, is most famous for a series of mystery stories and novelettes that feature the Roman Catholic priest, Fr. Brown. Adapted for stage, radio and film, the Fr. Brown stories have proved to be enduringly popular. But like Chesterton's other work, what to many may seem like trivial short stories contain profound observations of the world, human character, philosophy, morality and religion.
John Peterson, the editor of Father Brown of the Church of Rome, takes the reader through this first group of stories, giving valuable annotations as well as an introduction that gives a fascinating look at Chesterton's detective fiction. Fans of Father Brown and Chesterton will be delighted by this latest volume in the Collected Works.
Available in Softcover
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The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton
Volume 13
G.K. Chesterton, one of the most prolific writers of the 20th century, is most famous for a series of mystery stories and novelettes that feature the Roman Catholic priest, Fr. Brown. The stories have proved to be enduringly popular, containing profound observations of the world, human character, philosophy, morality and religion.
John Peterson, the editor of Father Brown of the Church of Rome, takes the reader through this group of stories, giving valuable annotations as well as an introduction that gives a fascinating look at Chesterton's detective fiction. Fans of Father Brown and Chesterton will be delighted by this latest volume in the Collected Works.
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The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton
Volume 14
Throughout his life, Gilbert Chesterton always had a propensity for throwing his genius around. As a result of this tendency, Chesterton penned articles, essays, stories, and poems for so many periodicals that it was almost impossible to keep track of them.
In this volume, Dr. Denis J. Conlon, Professor of English Literature at the University of Antwerp, has compiled Chesterton's short stories--some of which have never appeared in print. Many stories will be new to Chesterton fans because they were originally published in England and never appeared in U.S. editions, and others published in the U.S. remain unknown on the other side of the Atlantic. Dr. Conlon also includes the lost Father Brown stories, "Fr. Brown and the Donnington Affair" and "The Mask of Midas".
There are 43 short stories here, along with a selection of 25 complete and incomplete tales from Chesterton's notebooks, and numerous drawings and illustrations. Some of the stories in this wonderful volume are: "The Coloured Lands," "The Sword of Wood," "The Trees of Pride," "How I Found the Superman," "The Five of Swords," "Homesick at Home," and "The End of Wisdom." With illustrations.
Available in Softcover
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The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton
Volume 16
A two-in-one bargain: a book that is both by Chesterton and about Chesterton. An irresistable opportunity to see who this man really was. Includes 37 rare photos of Chesterton.
Available in Softcover
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The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton
Volume 18
In this volume's studies in literary criticism and biography, Chesterton exhibits his congenital perception of character and motive which makes all of his biographies shine. Chesterton's warm affection for Stevenson and Chaucer is vastly evident in his volumes on them. He was heavily influenced by Stevenson's romances that were full of manliness, courage and hope. Polemical literary criticism flourishes at its most vigorous in Chesterton's Chaucer, a tribute to medieval England and Chaucer's literature. His monographs on Tolstoy and Carlyle reveal keen insights into two very different writers, thus providing four unique studies that teach us much concerning the distinctions in literature and in life between normality and abnormality.
Available in Softcover
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The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton
Volume 20
This next volume in Chesterton's series of collected works contains four of his books and four shorter "English" essays. Three of the books are accounts of his travels, two to Ireland and one to Palestine via Egypt. The fourth book is Chesteron's own effort to explain English history to Englishmen as well as to other interested parties, particularly the Irish. All of these books date from about 1920, except Christendom in Ireland, which concerns the 1932 Dublin Eucharistic Congress, which Chesterton attended.
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The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton
Volume 21
This volume contains Chesterton's commentaries and reflections on what he saw on his travels in America and Rome, plus an appendix on how America saw Chesterton. On January 10, 1921, Gilbert and Frances Chesterton began a three month tour of the United States. During their first stop in the City of New York, Chesterton examined the lights of Broadway and proclaimed: "What a glorious garden of wonders this would be to anyone who was lucky enough to be unable to read."
In his writing on America, Chesterton shows a remarkable ability for sympathetic appreciation of the principle traits of America. He would acquire an uncanny clear-sightedness about many things in America that it would not be an exaggeration to call clairvoyant. One greatness recognized another greatness, and one can say that Chesterton truly knew something profound about America.
Throughout the 1920's and 1930's, Chesterton's travels included Jerusalem, Ireland, North America and Rome. This volume contains his reflections on his 1921 and 1930-31 tour of North America and his 1929 trip to Rome. Readers will enjoy the great man's impressions of city skyscrapers, rural America, the politics of Washington, as well as his views of Pope Pius XI, the Eternal City, Mussolini and Fascism.
The introduction to this volume was written by Dr. Robert Royal, Vice President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington, D.C. The appendix was compiled by the late Chairman of the Northeastern Chapter of the G.K. Chesterton Society, Mr. Robert Knille. The appendix gives the newspaper accounts of Chesterton's 1921 trip to America. It contains generous excerpts of the speeches, interviews and comments G.K.C. made during his tour. Most of the material provided has never appeared in book form.
"Anyone who knows the Eternal City well will recognize in Chesterton's vision a truth about Rome that has never been captured with such force before or since."
-- Robert RoyalAvailable in Softcover
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The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton
Volume 27–37: Illustrated London News, 1908-1910
Volumes 27 through 37 are collected columns from The Illustrated London News. Most of the weekly articles Chesterton wrote for The Illustrated London News have never been printed in book form until Ignatius Press undertook to do the collected works. These volumes contain all of Chesterton's columns in The Illustrated London News, beginning in 1905. The great majority have never appeared in book form. Chesterton lovers will be delighted to find this treasure filled with jewels quite the match of his best writing.
Can Chesterton always be at his best? Well, Chesterton is always Chesterton. Here is a scattered sampling of the titles in this third volume of Illustrated London News articles: "Fashionable Suffragettes and the Truly Feminine", "Bad Sentences and Bad Theology", "Capitalism and Marriage", "The Failure of Words in Our Time", "On Glorifying Divorce", "The Modern Anti-Democracy", "Modern Womanhood", "Too Much Vox Populi?", "The Curse of Labels", "The Broadening Down of Democracy", "Science in America", "The Causes of War", "On Being Old-Fashioned", and--surely helpful for us all--"The Right to Denounce Things".
- Vol. 27 – Available in Softcover and Hardcover
- Vol. 28 – Available in Softcover
- Vol. 29 – Available in Softcover and Hardcover
- Vol. 30 – Available in Softcover and Hardcover
- Vol. 31 – Available in Softcover and Hardcover
- Vol. 32 – Available in Softcover and Hardcover
- Vol. 33 – Available in Softcover and Hardcover
- Vol. 34 – Available in Softcover and Hardcover
- Vol. 36 – Available in Softcover, Hardcover, and E-book
- Vol. 37 – Available in Softcover, Hardcover, and E-book