A forgotten hero of journalism and writing: GK Chesteron - A forgotten hero

G K Chesterton was once one of the most famous writers in Britain, if not the world. He made several highly popular tours of the United States of America.

He was a journalist who wrote hundreds of articles -many of them never published in anthology form, so copious was his output. But all of them seemed to be of a high standard. He also wrote a number of books, the best remembered being the fantasy novel, "The Man Who Was Thursday".

But he has long faded into an undeserved obscurity. He wrote on a wide variety of topics. From what to do on a wet day to the advent of fads and cults and from new religions to the dangers of civil servants and "experts" from charities who seem more interested in following their own rules than looking after the people whose interests they were supposed to look after. No change there, then?

The following quotes from his writings show that Chesterton still has much to say to the modern world.

"There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect" The Defendant, 1901

"Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity." The Defendant, 1901

"Happiness is a mystery like religion, and should never be rationalised." Heretics, 1905

"If a man wishes to know the origin of human society, to know what society, philosophically speaking, really is, let him not go into the British Museum; let him go into society." Heretics 1905

"The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs." Heretics, 1905

"The word 'orthodoxy' not only no longer means being right; it practically means being wrong." Heretics, 1905

"Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction; for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it." The Club of Queer Trades, 1905

"We talk of wild animals; but man is the only wild animal. It is man that has broken out. All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of the tribe or type." Orthodoxy, 1909

"The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums." Orthodoxy 1909

"What is bad in the candid friend is simply that he is not candid. He is keeping something back - his own gloomy pleasure in saying unpleasant things." Orthodoxy, 1909

"Virtue is not the absence of vice or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell." Tremendous Trifles, 1909

"To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it." The Innocence of Father Brown 1911