G.K. Chesterton, b. 1874.

Chesterton to his friend George Bernard Shaw: “To look at you, anyone would think there was a famine in England.”
Shaw: “To look at you, anyone would think you caused it.”

Chesterton on Oscar Wilde: “Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde.”

Chesterton’s biography of Charles Dickens was largely responsible for creating a popular revival for Dickens’s work as well as a serious reconsideration of Dickens by scholars. It was considered by T. S. Eliot, Peter Ackroyd, and others, to be the best book on Dickens ever written.

G.K. Chesterton’s example and writings have influenced many other authors including C.S. Lewis, Neil Gaiman, John Dickson Carr, Dorothy Sayers, Evelyn Waugh, T.S. Eliot, and Graham Greene.

When The Times solicited essays on the theme “What’s Wrong with the World?” Chesterton’s contribution took the form of a letter:
Dear Sirs,
I am.
Sincerely yours,
G. K. Chesterton

More quotations:

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

“The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.” – Chapter 19, What I Saw In America, 1922

“Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline.” – Manalive.

“The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted: precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden.”

“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”

“Atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas . . . for it is the assertion of a universal negative.”

“It is perfectly obvious that in any decent occupation (such as bricklaying or writing books) there are only two ways (in any special sense) of succeeding. One is by doing very good work, the other is by cheating.”

“I might inform those humanitarians who have a nightmare of new and needless babies (for some humanitarians have that sort of horror of humanity) that if the recent decline in the birth-rate were continued for a certain time, it might end in there being no babies at all; which would console them very much.”

Whoa, go back three steps–actually one day. Yesterday was the birthday of G.K. Chesterton, and I can’t miss that one. He has so many great quotes. And Father Brown and The Man Who Was Thursday and Orthodoxy are such great books.

If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly. To me, this means do it and enjoy it no matter what your level of competency. You don’t have to be a great singer to sing, and you don’t have to be a great writer to blog.

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried. Often quoted, but still true.

I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.

The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense. Chesterton on homeschooling?

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person. I get very impatient with children who are bored or who say they are bored.

True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare. I wish I could develop true contentment, but I greatly fear that I am unwilling to put in the work required to get there.

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink. Wow, talk about praying without ceasing. This habit, too, would be good to develop.

Today is the birthday of Arnold Lobel, author and illustrator of many, many children’s books including, Frog and Toad Are Friends and Owl at Home. In fact, one biographer noted that Mr. Lobel died in 1987 leaving a legacy of over 100 books that he either wrote or illustrated. What a legacy!
It’s an especially fine legacy since many of Lobel’s stories are memorable and thought provoking for adults as well as children. A long time ago a friend read me the story Cookies from the book Frog and Toad Together. In this tale, Toad makes some cookies, and then Frog and Toad try, unsuccessfully, to keep themselves from eating all the cookies. In the midst of their fight against temptation, Frog says that they need will power which he defines as “trying hard not to do something that you really want to do.” At the end of the story, Toad is sad because the cookies are all gone. Frog says, “Yes, but we have lots and lots of will power.” Toad is not consoled. Neither am I when left with useless will power but no cookies. And isn’t it true that when I need will power to resist temptation it’s never enough, and I only have plenty of will power in the abstract when there’s no real place to exercise it.
Other unforgetable stories include:
A List in which Toad loses his list of things to do and is paralyzed and unable to do anything
A Lost Button in which Toad loses his button and shouts this immortal rant, “The whole world is covered with buttons and not one them is mine!”
A Swim in which Toad looks funny in his bathing suit.
Tear-Water Tea from the book Owl at Home in which Owl thinks of sad things to make himself cry so that he can make tea from his tears.
Mouse Soup in which a mouse tells stories a la Sheherazade in order to keep from beng cooked into a weasel’s soup.

Lobel was a great story-teller himself, and I am indebted to him for many smiles and pleasant read-aloud times.

May 9:
Eleanor Estes: The Hundred Dresses is a wonderful chilldren’s book about prejudice and cruelty and repentance and how sometimes we repent but are unable to repair the damage we have done. It turns out Eleanor Estes was a children’s librarian. I like librarians.
Sir J.M. Barrie (1860-1937): Peter Pan is fun, but I really enjoyed The Little Minister when I read it many years ago. It’s the romantic story of a new minister in a a small village who falls in love with an elusive gypsy girl.

May 12:
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882): I will never forget watching a film in some literature class with Oliver Reed as Rossetti. He played a daark and tortured poetic genius, misunderstood, of course. I’d love to see the film again to see if it’s as memorable as I remember. Anyway, Rossetti was a Victorian, Pre Raphaelite poet and artist. You can go here to read some of his poetry.
Edward Lear You can go hrer for poetry that’s a little lighter than that of Rossetti. My personal favorite is The Pobble Who Had No Toes. It’s a fact the whole world knows,/That Pobbles are happier without their toes.

May 13
Daphne Du Maurier: I already jumped the gun and wrote about her here.

May 14
Hall Caine (1853-1941): I never heard of him, but according to VictorianWeb , he was a novelist and a protege of . . . Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Dante Alighieri: Last, but not least, I found this date for Dante’s birth in some source, however, this Dante website says that he “was born in Florence in May or June 1265.” Since it fits with what has become the theme of this post, we’ll use this date.

Today (Whoops, not today, but rather May 13) is the birthday of Daphne du Maurier , author of Rebecca, of course, but also of several other novels and of the short story, “The Birds” which inspired another Alfred Hitchcock movie.

Who could improve on these lines for the beginning of a novel or a movie?
“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me.”
Du Maurier also wrote this about authors: Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.
And see how obedient I am? Only those of my readers who know me have ever seen or heard me. I am a blog crying in the wilderness, “Read me and be enlightened!”