Chesterton Day by Day

This is a collection of quotes selected by Chesterton himself from material the ever--popular Chesterton wrote between 1901 and 1911. Editorial comments have been added to explain details dimmed by the passage of time. A bibliography describes the sources used, and a detailed, 17-page index helps readers locate specific topics and quotes.

For any author, much less a 'rolicking' journalist often caught up in the passing controversies of his day, the writings of G. K. Chesterton have shown remarkable staying power. During his life, this talented British writer was the private friend and public foe of writers such as George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells. Two-thirds of a century after his death, the ideas of Shaw and Wells seem curiously quaint and dated, while Chesterton's writings remain fresh as the day they were written. That's why many of Wells later and more political writings are out of print while more and more of what Chesterton wrote is finding its way back onto the shelves of bookstores.

The reason simple. Chesterton is one of the most quotable writers of the twentieth-century. He has an incredible knack for capturing in a few concise and memorable words what other authors labor and groan to say over many pages. Lengthy books have been written to explain the essence of Fascism and its close kin Nazism. Few have come as close as Chesterton did when he remarked that, "The intellectual criticism of Fascism is really this: that it appeals to an appetite for authority, without very clearly giving the authority for the appetite." That is Hitler's "Fuhrer Principle" in a nutshell, and why so many followed the German dictator into madness.