Chesterton's influence
Just to keep this at the top of my LJ...

First, this is not only my personal LiveJournal, but also one about G.K. Chesterton (it is simply easier to use one LJ for both purposes, rather than to have two separate LiveJournals). So expect quite a few posts about G.K. Chesterton in addition to my own regular posts.

So, do you wish to learn more about my favorite author? :-)



The influence of G.K. Chesterton, both nonreligious and Christian- Catholic and Protestant alike (as well as some just interesting facts about him). This list is continually growing....(and at the end of this post, I give a link to a post with many good Chesterton quotes)

(When giving the sources for information coming from the book Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G.K. Chesterton by Joseph Pearce, Ignatius Press, 1996, 2004, I will simply put Wisdom and Innocence, followed by the page number).
_________________________

-Gilbert Keith Chesterton and Herbert George Wells, together with George Bernard Shaw, were the three most famous writers of Edwardian England [Source- The Fantastic Fiction of Gilbert Chesterton, Martin Gardner, p. 14]

-"[G.K. Chesterton] was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1935, but in the end no prize was awarded for that year." [Source- Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, Volume 10, part II, xix]

-A newspaper article he wrote for the Illustrated London News is what first inspired Mohandas Gandhi to start his movement to end British colonial rule in India [Source]

To be more specific: in 1909 Mohandas Gandhi read one of his Illustrated London News columns, was deeply affected by it, translated it into Gujarati, and wrote a book based on it, Hind Swaraj, that gave a decisive shape to subsequent Indian national self-determination. [Source]

-As the editor of his own paper, G.K.'s Weekly, he published an essay which was the first work ever to be published in the English language that was written by Eric Blair, aka George Orwell (1984, Animal Farm). [Source- Wisdom and Innocence, p. 363]

Also:

Scholars of the works of both G. K. Chesterton and George Orwell agree that Orwell was well-read in Chesterton. As a schoolboy Orwell report­edly quoted Chesterton frequently [Source- George Orwell, Courtney T. Wemyss, p. 5]

And:

Jacintha Buddicam remembered fondly her youthful conversations with Eric Blair (George Orwell), a childhood friend, beginning in the year 1915 when Blair, or Orwell, was about 12 years old. "He was crazy about Chesterton," she recalled, and reported that he had given her a copy of Chesterton's Manalive. [Source- Jonathon Rose, The Revised Orwell, pp. 85-86]

Finally, curiously enough, according to classicliterature.net:

[Chesterton's] book "The Napoleon of Notting Hill" led George Orwell to write his classic novel, "1984", in which he has made several veiled references to "The Napoleon of Notting Hill [Source]

Now admittedly that states Chesterton's influence on 1984 to be more than I have ever seen maintained elsewhere, but I have certainly seen many sources state they do believe that The Napoleon of Notting Hill influenced 1984 (such as very possibly in the date, since The Napoleon of Notting Hill, written in 1904, was set in the year 1984)

(Also, to be fair, regardless of any influence on 1984, it should be noted that Orwell was much more critical of Chesterton in the latter part of Orwell's life)

-Author J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter) is a fan of Chesterton. As Joseph Pearce observed:

Among the literati, those best-selling fantasists J.K. Rowling and Terry Pratchett have both paid homage to the man who blazed his won fantastic trail across Edwardian and Georgian England with novels such as The Napoleon of Notting Hill, The Man Who Was Thursday and The Ball and the Cross. [Source- Literary Giants, Literary Catholics, p. 85]

Also, Nancy Brown has pointed out concerning Rowling:

She reads C.S. Lewis, Jane Austen, J.R.R. Tolkien, and E. Nesbit; a favorite poem of Hilaire Belloc's hangs framed on her study wall; her favorite painting is a Caravaggio called "The Supper at Emmaus"; she belongs to the UK Chesterton Society; she quotes Dorothy Sayers... [Source- The Mystery of Harry Potter, Nancy Brown, p. 21)

-Now, for Chesterton's influence on perhaps this century's leading Christian writer in the English language (though that title, it could plausibly be argued, belongs to Chesterton himself). Warning: this section is a tad long.

His apologetics book The Everlasting Man was to play a key role in the conversion of C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia; Mere Christianity) to Christianity.:

"Then I read Chesterton's Everlasting Man and for the first time saw the whole Christian outline of history set out in a form that seemed to me to make sense . . . I already thought Chesterton the most sensible man alive "apart from his Christianity." Now, I veritably believe, I thought that Christianity itself was very sensible 'apart from its Christianity.'" [Source]

Elsewhere Lewis wrote:

"In reading Chesterton, as in reading MacDonald, I did not know what I was letting myself in for. A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. . . . God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous [Source]

Also, Lewis described The Everlasting Man as:

"the best popular apologetic I know" (in a letter to Sheldon Vanauken, December 14, 1950, found in A Severe Mercy, and "the [very] best popular defence of the full Christian position I know is G. K. Chesteron's The Everlasting Man." (in a letter to Rhonda Bodle, December 31, 1947, found in C.S. Lewis: The Collected Letters, Vol. 2)[Source].

From C.S. Lewis' Final Interview, a couple of snips:

Wirt: A light touch has been characteristic of your writings, even when you are dealing with heavy theological themes. Would you say there is a key to the cultivation of such an attitude?

Lewis: I believe this is a matter of temperament. However, I was helped in achieving this attitude by my studies of the literary men of the Middle Ages, and by the writings of G.K. Chesterton. Chesterton, for example, was not afraid to combine serious Christian themes with buffoonery

Also:

Wirt: What Christian writers have helped you?

Lewis: The contemporary book that has helped me the most is Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man. [Source]

OK, though I could quote more, that is enough for now about Chesterton's influence on C.S. Lewis. :-)

Now let's turn to his influence on J.R.R. Tolkien (Lord of the Rings).

Joseph Pearce writes:

In his essay, "On Fairy Stories", Tolkien confesses the influence of what he terms Chestertonian Fantasy on his formulation of the nature, and supernature, of mythology. It is, indeed, no wonder that Chesterton would have been so important to the young Tolkien. The towering influence of the legendary Chesterbelloc upon the intellectual life of England in general, and upon the intellectual life of Catholics in England in particular, was at its most potent and profound in the years from 1900 until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. This is significant because it coincides with Tolkien's youth and, presumably with the most crucial years of his own intellectual and spiritual development. He was eight years old when Chesterton burst upon the literary and intellectual scene in 1900 and was twenty-two at the outbreak of the war...

...Why, one might ask, was Chesterton's and Bellocs influence on Tolkien so relevant to a discussion of the individual and the community in Middle Earth? Put simply, it is my contention that Tolken was greatly enamored of the distributist ideas of both these men and that this animated the sociopolitical and sociocultural vision of his work. Chesterton's distributist novel, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, and Belloc's seminal critique of sociopolitical history, The Servile State, were published during the formative years of Tolkien's life, the former in 1904, the latter in 1912 [Source- Literary Giants, Literary Catholics, p. 248]

-Both President John F. Kennedy and President Ronald Reagan were fans of Chesterton

John F. Kennedy [Source]
Ronald Reagan [Source- The Quotable Chesterton, p. xv)

-Martin Luther King, Jr. also apparently quoted Chesterton:

When King quotes Shakespeare it is in most cases from Macbeth or Othello; when he uses Donne is is almost aways the passage starting with "No man is an Iland, intire of its selfe" from "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions." His use of Tolstoy is more varied but often focuses on the accounts of his conversion. Other writers that King quotes or paraphrases include Tennyson, Hugo, Emerson, Chesterton, Longfellow, and Dante. [Source- Ring Out Freedom: The Voice of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement, Fredrik Sunnemark, p. 246]

-Alexander Solzhenitsyn read Chesterton:

Although Solzhenitsyn never wrote anything about G.K. Chesterton, he possessed a set of his Collected Works and read them cover to cover. Many of his positions mirror those of Chesterton, a clear case of great minds thinking alike. Rejecting the twin cimeras of Socialism and Capitalism, Solzhenitsyn called for Russia's recovery based on local government and small business. His book "Restoring Russia" deserves to be on any Distributist's bookshelf. And the man himself can truly be hailed as a legitimate successor to Chesterton. [Source- Gilbert Magazine, July/August 2009, p. 44]

-Even though they disagreed on nearly everything, Chesterton was very good friends with H.G. Wells (The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine) and George Bernard Shaw (Pygmalion, on which the muscial My Fair Lady is based). But that did not prevent Chesterton from pointing out the flaws he found in his friends' work. For instance, Chesterton, at age 31 in 1905, when he was near the beginning of his literary career, wrote the book Heretics, including chapters on both Wells and Shaw:

Mr. Bernard Shaw
Mr. H.G. Wells and the Giants

Indeed, as Chesterton wrote in the first chapter of Heretics:

I am not concerned with Mr. Bernard Shaw as one of the most brilliant and one of the most honest men alive; I am concerned with him as a Heretic--that is to say, a man whose philosophy is quite solid, quite coherent, and quite wrong.

(Though this might have been written before he met Shaw and Wells; I don't know).

Similary, even though they had been friends for years by 1925, Chesterton wrote The Everlasting Man as a response to what he believed to be the errors in Wells' Outline of History

But, like I said, that did not prevent their having a warm friendship

In 1933, H.G. Wells wrote in a letter to Chesterton.

"If after all my Atheology turns out wrong and your Theology right I feel I shall always be able to pass into Heaven (if I want to) as a friend of G.K.C.'s. [Source- Wisdom and Innocence, p. 436)

Much earlier, in 1908 Wells had written an article describing his wish to be a "a painted pagan god" living upon a ceiling:

"The company about me on the clouds varies greatly with the mood of the vision, but always it is in some, if not always a very obvious way, beautiful. One frequent presence is G.K. Chesterton, a joyous whirl of brushwork, appropriately garmented and crowned. When he is there, I remark, the whole ceiling is by a sort of radiation convivial. We drink limitless old October from handsome flagons, and we argue mightily about Pride (his weak point) and the nature of Deity..." [Source- Wisdom and Innocence, p. 59]

H.G. Wells also wrote concerning Chesterton after his death: "From first to last he and I were very close friends...I never knew anyone so steadily true to form as G.K.C." [Source- Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Maise Ward, p. 371)

And, of course, Chesteron and Wells are the ones who together invented the game of Gype :-) [Source]

Shaw, meanwhile, gave Chesterton his nickname of the "colossal genius" [Source] and stated: "The world is not thankful enough for Chesterton" [Source]. Shaw and Chesterton also starred together in a 1914 silent movie called Rosy Rapture (more on that below)

Shaw also stated concerning Chesterton's biography of him that it was "the best work of literary art I have yet provoked." [Source- Wisdom and Innocence, p.143]

Chesterton, for his part, wrote: "I believe I have two true affections- one for truth, and the other for Mr. Shaw. I follow truth with reluctance." [Source- Wisdom and Innocence, p. 126]

-Chesterton maintained a lifelong friendship with J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan) [Source], and he appeared in a movie Barrie made called Rosy Rapture. You can find out more about the movie, and see a photograph that includes Chesterton, Barrie, and Shaw (with a couple others) as cowboys(!) here.

-Chesterton also greatly influenced the art of Alfred Hitchcock

The influence of Chesterton must be assessed as well. Much admired and celebrated by the Catholic clergy, and read by Catholic schoolboys, Chesterton's popular essays "A Defence of Penny Dreadfuls" and "A Defence of Detective stories" (published in his 1901 collection The Defendant) entertained the adolescent Hitchcock, and provided him with ideas for the formation of his own style and vision when he was an apprentice filmmaker. It was Chesterton who defended popular literature, Chesterton who pointed out the archetypal, fairy-tale structure of police stories, and Chesterton who defended exploration of criminal behavior.

"One of the strangest examples of the degree to which ordinary life is undervalued is the example of popular literature, the vast mast of which we contentedly describe as vulgar." Hitchcock read in "A Defense of Penny Dreadfuls."

[Source- The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock, Donald Spoto, p. 40)

And from one webpage on Alfred Hitchcock:

The legacy of Symbolist/Decadent literature and art was a powerful one and can't be denied in Hitchcock's work. However, a writer who initially fell under the spell of the Decadents, but who soon took a stand against “pessimist” writers in general, including Wilde and Joseph Conrad, was G.K. Chesterton – and Chesterton exerted on Hitchcock practically as big an influence as anyone. [Source]

(That webpage has an entire section detailing Chesterton's influence on Hitchcock)

Finally, the title (though not the plot) of one of Hitchcock's movies (and its remake), The Man Who Knew Too Much, came from a book of mysteries of Chesterton's of that same name.:

Hitchcock made The Man Who Knew Too Much twice, in England in 1934 and in America in 1956. It was based on a story by Charles Bennett and D.B. Wyndham-Lewis, though the title actually comes from a collection of mysteries by G.K. Chesterton, to which Hitchcock owned the rights and which has nothing to do with the story-line of the films he made. [Source- Hitchcock as Philosopher, Robert J. Yanal, p. 166]

-Chesterton was the favorite author of Orson Welles, who in 1938 produced a radio dramatization of Chesterton's novel The Man Who Was Thursday with his Mercury Radio Theatre on the Air (just a few weeks before his infamous War of the Worlds broadcast which created a widespread panic in America).[Source]

You can listen to the broadcast (in which Welles played the protagonist Gabriel Syme) here.

Just a note, though. If you listen to Welles broadcast, make sure you do so after reading the book (which is online). Because of time constraints (and other factors no doubt) Welles of necessity had to leave out some of the best material (and one might say even most important material) in the book, and besides the problems that obviously brings, it also makes it harder to follow the storyline (though the broadcast is still very good).

Orson Welles stated concerning Chesterton at the beginning of that broadcast (among other things):

G.K.C., Gilbert Keith Chesterton, great, greatly articulate Roman convert and liberal, has been dead now for two years. For a unique brand of common sense enthusiasm, for a singular gift of paradox, for a deep reverence and a high wit, and most of all for a free and shamelessly beautiful English prose, he will never be forgotten.

-Author Terry Pratchett writes that Chesterton "in small doses taken regularly is good for the soul" [Source- Wisdom and Innocence, p. 90]; he and co-author Neil Gaiman dedicated their novel Good Omens "to the memory of GK Chesterton, a man who knew what was going on" (according to Gaiman, it was because they thought they "were doing The Man Who Was Thursday" when writing the book [Source]). (NOTE- The previous link includes a major spoiler for The Man Who Was Thursday). Also a character in the book (Good Omens) states that Chesterton is "the only poet in the twentieth century to even come close to the Truth." [Source- Wisdom and Innocence, p. 90.]

Terry Pratchett also writes: It's worth pointing out that in The Man Who was Thursday and The Napoleon of Notting Hill he gave us two of the most emotionally charged plots in the twentieth century... [Source- Wisdom and Innocence, p. 90]

And when asked in an interview what his ten favorite books were, the first book Pratchett listed was The Napoleon of Notting Hill:

For teaching me how to see the world. To Chesterton, even a quiet street was a world of fantasy and a street lamp more precious that a star (because there's a universe full of stars, compared to which street lamps are really uncommon. [Source]

Neil Gaiman also stated that The Napoleon of Notting Hill was an important influence on his book Neverwhere [Source], and he based the character Fiddler's Green from The Sandman on Chesterton. [Source]The following is a scan of a couple of panels from The Sandman that feauture him: Fiddler's Green

And in the prescript to his novel Coraline, Gaiman quotes Chesterton: "Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten." [Source]

Chesterton was admired by F. Scott Fitzgerald as well:

-A collection of the letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald shows a number of references to Chesterton as the writer struggled in 1917 with his unsuccessful first draft of This Side of Paradise. He wrote Edmund Wilson that the novel "shows traces of Chesterton," and that he put "Barrie and Chesterton above anyone except Wells." Fitzgerald complained to biographer Shane Leslie of "gloomy, half-twilight realism," asking "Where are the novels of five years ago?" Fitzgerald included Chesterton's Manalive on his approved novel list, and also confided to Leslie that he was planning to quote some Chesterton gibberish on his new novel's title page ("Highty-ighty, tiddly-ighty, tiddley-ighty, ow!" from The Club of Queer Trades). [Source- A Life in Letters, pp. 12-20]

In the first chapter of Fitzgeralds very first novel This Side of Paradise, the protagonist is said to have read Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday:

"...which he liked without understanding" [Source]

Also, the following was presented at the Ninth International F. Scott Fitzgerald Conference (2007):

“‘Where are the Novels of Five Years Ago?’: G. K. Chesterton’s Influence on Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise and The Great Gatsby,” Neisha McGuckin (Boston MA) [Source]

-Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451) describes Chesterton as one of his literary heroes, and wrote a long story-poem about his heroes, mentioning Chesterton in the title itself, entitled: "The R.B., G.K.C., and G.B.S. Forever Orient Express"

As Bradbury explains:

"The R.B., G.K.C., and G.B.S. Forever Orient Express" is not a story, per se, but more a story-poem, and it is a perfect demonstration of my complete love for the library and its authors from the time I was eight years old. I didn't make it to college, so the library became my meeting place with people like G.K. Chesterton and Shaw and the rest of that fabulous group who inhabited the stacks. My dream was to one day walk into the library and see one of my books leaning against one of theirs.I never was jealous of my heroes, nor did I envy them, I only wanted to trot along as lapdog to their fame.

[Source- The Cat's Pajamas, xviii-xix, Ray Bradbury)]

-Concerning Chesterton's biography on Charles Dickens:

Considered by T.S. Eliot, Peter Ackroyd, and others, to be the best book on Dickens ever written, this literary biography was largely responsible for creating both a popular revival for Dickens' works and serious reconsideration of Dickens by scholars[Source]

Additional people who consider Chesterton's biography to be the best book ever written about Dickens include President Theodore Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw, and William James. [Source- G.K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense, Dale Ahlquist, p. 17]

And, perhaps the greatest tribute Chesterton could have received was from Dicken's own daughter:

Kate Perugini, the daughter of Dickens, wrote two letters of immense enthusiasm about the book, saying it was the best thing written about her father since Forster's biography [Source- Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Maisie Ward, p. 158]

-His novel, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, inspired Irish nationalist Michael Collins to lead a movement for Irish independance. (In fact, knowing of Collins literary taste, and wishing for them to better understand his mindset, it is said the British Prime Minister Lloyd George presented a copy of The Napoleon of Notting Hill to every member of his cabinet prior to meeting with the Irish delegation during negotiations for the Irish treaty) [Source- Wisdom and Innocence, p. 89].

The Napoleon of Notting Hill was Collin's favorite book [Source]

Also, from a website, concerning the influence of Chesterton's novel The Man Who Was Thursday on Collins:

One of his [Collin's] central ideas was derived from G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday. He was given the book by Joseph Plunkett, his immediate superior in 1916.... And Collins prized in particular the advice of the Chief Anarchist in the Chesterton book: 'if you don’t seem to be hiding nobody hunts you out'. Accordingly, Collins never seemed to be hiding. He always wore good suits, neatly pressed. And time after time, this young businessman was passed through police cordons unsearched, with his pockets stuffed with incriminating documents. [Source]

-Best-selling author Dean Koontz states:

By the time I was going to college, I was looking for a different path from where I had been. Then I began to be drawn to — I wouldn’t say more organized, but a more formalized kind of faith. I did become engaged, more and more as the years went by, by the intellectual rigor that lies behind the Catholic Church. A lot of people will possibly laugh at that but if you know St. Thomas Aquinas and some of the other famous writers of the Church — or laymen who wrote brilliantly from a Catholic perspective like G.K. Chesterton — then you understand what I’m talking about. There is a deep intellectual basis behind it and that always appealed to me. [Source]

-Gene Wolfe is a fan of Chesterton. Also:

[Wolfe] acknowledges a literary debt to G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis... [Source]

-Chesterton created one of the classics of the mystery story genre with his Father Brown stories. There were later two Father Brown movies, the latter being made in 1954 and starring Alec Guinness (who played Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars). In his autobiography, Guinness credited this movie as playing a huge role in his conversion to Catholicism.[Source]. Of course, Guiness was also a fan of Chesterton's. Also, there was in the 1970's a Father Brown television series starring Kenneth More. [Source]

-The creators of Columbo wrote:

When we created Columbo, we were influenced by the bureaucratic Petrovitch in Crime and Punishment and by G.K. Chesterton's marvelous little cleric, Father Brown [Source]

-Strand Magazine notes:

In 1929 Anthony Berkeley founded London’s Detection Club, one of its avowed purposes being to promote the ideals that Chesterton had articulated as a critic and had realized so successfully in his Father Brown stories. It was a small and select group that included Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Freeman Wills Crofts, E.C. Bentley, Austen Freeman, and Ronald Knox. To this day members must agree to adhere, when writing their mysteries, to certain rules of fair play—those so skillfully incorporated into Chesterton’s mysteries.

Chesterton, of course, was duly installed as the club’s first president, a position he held until his death in 1936. It was an appropriate honor for detective fiction’s leading spokesman and acknowledged father of the cozy murder mystery. [Source]

-Chesterton was one of the contributers (along with Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ronald Knox and Freeman Wills Crofts) for the detective novel The Floating Admiral. [Source]

-Agatha Christie mentioned one of Chesterton's many instances of absent-mindedness in the novel At Bertram's Hotel

"Now don't you worry,Mrs. McCrae," he said in his genial fashion, as he sat down to the meal she had prepared for his arrival. "We'll hunt the absent-minded fellow down. Ever heard that story about Chesterton? G. K. Chesterton, you know, the writer. Wired to his wife when he'd gone on a lecture tour 'Am at Crewe Station. Where ought I to be?'"

He laughed. Mrs. McCrae smiled dutifully. She did not think it was very funny because it was so exactly the sort of thing that Canon Pennyfather might have done.

-John Dickson Carr modeled his fictional detective Dr. Gideon Fell on Chesterton [Source]

-Evelyn Waugh was a huge fan of Chesterton, and Chesterton helped inspire Brideshead Revisited.

As Joseph Pearce notes:

The most striking example of Chesterton's influence on Waugh is to be found in the way that Chesterton inspired Brideshead Revisited, arguably the finest of Waugh's novels and undeniably one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. The novel's central theme of the redemption of lost souls by means of "the unseen hook and invisible line...the twitch upon the thread" was taken from one of Chesterton's Father Brown stories. Waugh told a friend that he was anxious to obtain a copy of the omnibus edition of the Father Brown stories at the time he was putting the finishing touches to Brideshead, and a memorandum he wrote for MGM studios when a film version of the novel was being considered confirmed the profundity of Chesterton's influence:

"The Roman Catholic Church has the unique power of keeping remote control over human souls which have once been part of her. G.K. Chesterton has compared this to the fisherman's line, which allows the fish the illusion of free play in the water and yet has him by the hook; in his own time the fisherman by a 'twitch upon the thread' draws the fish to land."

[Source- Literary Giants, Literary Catholics, pp. 212-213]

Also, Wikipedia notes:

In Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited, a quote from the Father Brown story "The Queer Feet" is an important element of the structure and theme of the book. Father Brown speaks this line after catching a criminal, hearing his confession, and letting him go: "I caught him, with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world, and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread." Book 3 of Brideshead Revisited is called "A Twitch Upon the Thread," and the quote acts as a metaphor for the operation of grace in the characters lives. They are free to wander the world according to their free will until they are ready and receptive to God's grace, at which point He acts in their lives and effects a conversion. In the miniseries made by Granada Television adapting Brideshead, the character Lady Marchmain (Claire Bloom ) reads this passage aloud. [Source]

-Speaking of Evelyn Waugh, here was his opinion on The Everlasting Man:

Chesterton is primarily the author of The Everlasting Man. In that book all his random thoughts are concentrated and refined; all his aberrations made straight. It is a great, popular book, one of the few really great popular books of the century; the triumphant assertion that a book can be both great and popular. And it needs no elucidation. It is brilliantly clear. It met a temporary need and survives as a permanent monument. [Source- Wisdom and Innocence, p. 310]

-Fr. Ronald Knox's attitude on The Everlasting Man: "...firmly of the opinion that posterity will regard The Everlasting Man as the best of his books." [Source- Wisdom and Innocence, p. 310]

-Chesterton's close friendship with Hilaire Belloc (Cautionary Tales for Children) inspired George Bernard Shaw to coin the term "Chesterbelloc". And Belloc's famous poem Lines to a Don was written as a response to the:

Remote and ineffectual Don
That dared attack my Chesterton

Plus, Belloc wrote a poem about Chesterton entitled The Only Man I Regularly Read

As Joseph Pearce notes:

In later years, Belloc would describe Chesterton as 'the Master' and would consider him 'a thinker so profound and so direct that he had no equal'. [Source- Old Thunder, p. 101)

-Chesterton's epic poem The Ballad of the White Horse, frequently quoted in the London papers during WW2, is one of the great epic poems in the English language. As Joseph Pearce notes:

The Ballad of the White Horse captured the imagination of a whole generation and influenced some of the century's greatest writers. John Galsworthy, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were among its admirers, although Tolkien later became more critical of its undoubted flaws. It was also one of Graham Greene's favorite poems. In an interview published in the Observer on 12 March 1978, Greene called Chesterton "another underestimated poet". To illustrate the point, he cited the Ballad: "Put The Ballad of the White Horse against The Waste Land. If I had to lose one of them, I'm not sure that...well anyhow, let's just say I re-read The Ballad more often!" [Source- Literary Giants, Literary Catholics, p. 42]

Another admire of this poem was the Pulitzer prize poet W.H. Auden [Source- The Ballad of the White Hourse (with introduction by Sister Bernadette Sheridan), p. xxix]

-And as for some of his lighter poetry, Auden described Chesterton's first book ever published, Greybeards at Play, as containing "some of the best pure nonsense verse in English" [Source- Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy, p. 199]

-Kingsley Amis described Chesterton's novel The Man Who Was Thursday as "the most thrilling book I have ever read". [Source].

Amis also stated: Definition is impossible: The Man Who was Thursday is not quite a political bad dream, nor a metaphysical thriller, nor a cosmic joke in the form of a spy novel, but it is something of all three. What it has most of is a boys' adventure story, which might help to explain my early excitement but not so much my continuing devotion. And what a title! I will not divulge its meaning here, but I cannot resist saying that anybody who at the sight of it does not feel a faint tingle of excitement and a breath of wonder is not really a fit person to be reading the book. [Source]

-From one website: British heavy metal band Iron Maiden uses an excerpt from one of [Chesterton's] hymns as the first verse in their song "Revelations" from 1983's Piece of Mind. [Source]

While I admittedly am not a big fan of that song other than the lyrics to the first verse which are taken from Chesterton, still, here is that song on Youtube:

"Revelations"

And here someone performs the full hymn that Chesterton wrote (1906):

"O God of Earth and Altar"

-Rock and Roll legend Dion DiMucci loves Chesterton:

Then I went to G.K. Chesterton...He was Catholic and I started looking at what he was saying about Catholicism, and I’m telling you...C.S. Lewis, [Chesterton], these guys are my heroes. I love these guys. [Source]

-Golfing legend Bobby Jones was likely a Chesterton fan, and Golf Digest reported what it refers to as a "compelling theory" that the reason the Masters jacket is green can be found in Chesterton's Father Brown story, "The Queer Feet." [Source]

-During his lifetime, Chesterton was one of the very few major writers to speak out against Eugenics. He wrote a book against it, published in 1922 (though begun in 1910), called Eugenics and other Evils.

As Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park) writes:

Chesterton's was one of the few voices to oppose eugenics in the early twentieth century. He saw right through it as fraudulent on every level, and he predicted where it would lead, with great accuracy. His critics were legion; they reviled him as a reactionary, ridiculous, ignorant, hysterical, incoherent, and blindly prejudiced, noting with dismay that 'his influence in leading people in the wrong way is considerable.' Yet Chesterton was right, and the consensus of scientists, political leaders, and the intelligentsia was wrong....This book is worth reading because, in retrospect, it is clear that Chesterton's arguments were perfectly sensible and deserving of an answer, and yet he was simply shouted down. [Source]

Michael Crichton also writes concerning Chesterton's book What's Wrong With the World:

Bon vivant, wit, and tireless author, Chesterton lost the debate about the future direction of society to his contemporaries H. G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, and George Bernard Shaw. Chesterton saw the implications of their vision of twentieth century society, and he predicted exactly what would come of it. [Source]

-Chesterton's leadership in the distributist movement was also influential. As Aidan Mackey writes:

Fritz Schumacher, founder-philosopher of the new conservationist and decentralist movement, acknolwedged his debt to the inspiration of Chesterton's thought and the social philosophy of Distributism. Indeed, his famous book, Small is Beautiful, grew from an essay which he orginally named Chestertonian Economics. [Source- G.K. Chesterton: A Prophet for the 21st Century, p. 10]

For more information, go here.

-T.S. Eliot (The Waste Land) stated that Chesterton "deserves a permanent claim on our loyalty" [Source]

-During World War I, James Joyce formed a theater company to produce English plays in Switzerland. One of the productions was to be Chesterton's Magic, which went into rehearsal in May of 1918. When, however, the British consulate deemed the play unpatriotic, two of the actors resigned, and so Joyce scrubbed Magic in favor of less controversial material. [Source- Richard Ellman, James Joyce, pp. 439-40]

-Russell Kirk was a fan of Chesterton [Source]

-Instead of waging a war on terror, [George] Soros says, we should read G.K. Chesterton's 1907 fantasy thriller "The Man Who Was Thursday" and learn to infiltrate terrorist groups. [Source]

-In the light of Lewis' comments it is interesting to note that [Frank] Kafka was familiar with The Man Who Was Thursday. Discussing both Orthodoxy and The Man Who Was Thursday, Kafka remarked that Chesterton "is so gay, that one might almost believe he had found God....in such a godless time one must be gay. It is a duty." [Source- Wisdom and Innocence, p.108]

-A passage from Ernest Hemingway's short story "The Three-Day Blow" (In Our time) feauturing the character Nick Adams:

I'd like to meet Chesterton," Bill said.

"I wish he was here now," Nick said. "We'd take him fishing to the `Voix tomorrow."

"I wonder if he'd like to go fishing," Bill said.

"Sure," said Nick. "He must be about the best guy there is. Do you remember `Flying Inn'?"

If an angel out of heaven
Gives you something else to drink,
Thank him for his kind intentions;
Go and pour them down the sink.

"That's right," said Nick. "I guess he's a better guy that Walpole."

"Oh, he's a better guy, all right," Bill said.

"But Walpole's a better writer."

"I don't know," Nick said. "Chesterton's a classic."

"Walpole's a classic, too," Bill insisted.

"I wish we had them both here," Nick said. "We'd take they both fishing to the `Voix tomorrow."

-In 1912 Robert Frost rented a five-room house in Beaconsfield, noting its location "within a mile or two of where Milton finished Paradise Lost and a mile or two of where Grey lies buried and within as many rods as furlongs of the house where Chesterton tries truth to see if it won't prove as true upside down, as it does right side up." [Lawrence Thompson, Robert Frost, p. 394]

-From H.L. Mencken's review of Chesterton's biography George Bernard Shaw:

-The cleverest man in all the world...is here doing his cleverest writing. . . Not since St. Augustine have the gods sent us a man who could make the incredible so fascinatingly probable.

(Though it should be noted that Mencken became more critical of GKC later on).

-On news of Chesterton's death, T.H. White (The Once and Future King) announced:

"G.K. Chesterton died yesterday. P.G. Wodehouse is now the greatest living master of the English language" [Source- Literary Converts, Joseph Pearce, p. 191]

-P.G. Wodehouse used Chesterton as a metaphor:

At that moment, however, the drowsy stillness of the summer afternoon was shattered by what sounded to his strained senses like G.K. Chesterton falling on a sheet of tin.

From Mr. Mulliner Speaking

-From another website: In the 1920s, novelists G.K. Chesterton and Sinclair Lewis met in the book department in this store, leading to their collaboration on the unpublished play "Mary Queen of Scotch". [Source]

-Martin Garnder's book Great Essays in Science includes writing by Chesterton. From Amazon.com's review:

In Great Essays in Science Martin Gardner has collected essays by 32 great scientists and science writers. This excellent assortment of well-written, uncut pieces features Albert Einstein on "E=mc2," G. K. Chesterton on "The Logic of Elfland," Sigmund Freud on dreams, and Rachel Carson on the sea. Gardner, one of the best science writers and most insightful readers of the 20th century, thoughtfully introduces each essay. Originally published in 1957 and slightly updated in 1984, this reissued edition is unchanged in providing, as Gardner promises, "absorbing, thought-disturbing pieces that have something important to say about science and say it forcefully and well." [Source]

-The famous psychologist William James referred to Heretics as an "admirable collection of essays" [Source- Pragmatism, a New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking by William James, p. 3]

-From yet another website:

Other admirers included Marshall McLuhan, Agatha Christie, E.F. Schumacher ("small is beautiful"), Dorothy L. Sayers, Dorothy Day, Hugh Kenner, Gary Wills, Graham Greene, J.R.R. Tolkien, John F. Kennedy, Ernest Hemingway, Nobel Prize winner from Argentina Luis Borges. and on and on [Source]

-The media maven Marshall McLuhan was a GKC friend. In June of 1932, the twenty-year-old Marshall McLuhan wrote his parents back in Winnipeg with a practical suggestion. He urged them to enter a newspaper's "Believe It or Not" contest with Chesterton's A Short History of England, a history book that contains not one single date. [Source- Letters of Marshall McLuhan, p. 11]

Actually, it seems Chesterton's history book contains 4 dates. Still...

In any case, McLuhan was eventually to convert to Catholicism based on his reading Chesterton [Source]

(McLuhan also wrote an article entitled: "G.K. Chesterton: A Practical Mystic", as well as the introduction to the book Paradox in Chesterton) [Source]

-Chesterton loved to debate. One of his debates, when he visited America was with Clarence Darrow. As one website states:

During an American tour in 1931, Chesterton debated Clarence Darrow in New York City. The topic was the Genesis story of creation. Darrow, one of America's leading freethinkers following his dismantling of William Jennings Bryant during the Scopes "Monkey Trial," did not fare well, according to the majority opinion of those who attended; they were asked to vote for the winner of the debate, and Chesterton won, 2,359 to 1,022. One attendee said that "the trained scientific mind, the clear thinking, the lightning quickness in getting a point and hurling back an answer, turned out to belong to Chesterton. I have never heard Mr. Darrow alone, but taken relatively, when that relativity is to Chesterton, he appears positively muddle-headed."

Chesterton's opening statement following Darrow's initial speech, was, "It may come as a surprise to you, Mr. Darrow, and perhaps to all of you in the audience, but I agree entirely with everything you have said." It threw Darrow into utter confusion. In referring to the event obliquely in his Autobiography, Chesterton mentioned that in America he had debated a man who seemed to be arguing with his fundamentalist maiden aunt. [Source]

-Chesterton was influential in the conversions to Catholicism of both Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisited), directly, and Graham Greene (The Power and the Glory), indirectly. [Source- Wisdom and Innocence, p. x]

-Joseph Pearce writes:

Chesterton's reputation as one of the key figures in Christian literature during the 20th century is linked inextricably with the concept of "orthodoxy." His book of that title, published in 1908, was, according to Wilfrid Ward, a major milestone in the development of Christian thought.

Wilfrid Ward was certainly not alone in his flattering praise of Chesterton's book. Its influence on the intellectual development of a whole generation was summed up by Dorothy L. Sayers. She had first read Orthodoxy as a schoolgirl when her faith had been threatened by adolescent doubt. In later years she confessed that its "invigorating vision" had inspired her to look at Christianity anew, and that if she hadn't read Chesterton's book she might, in her schooldays, have given up Christianity altogether. [Source]

-Indeed, Wilfrid Ward (who was the first biographer of Cardinal Newman) stated concerning Chesterton after the publication of Orthodoxy:

"I class his thought- though not his manner- with that of such men as Burke, Butler and Coleridge..." [Source- Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy: The Making of GKC 1874-1908, William Oddie, p. 362]

-And Dorothy Sayers more specifically described Chesterton in 1952 in the following terms:

He was a Christian liberator. Like a beneficient bomb, he blew out of the Church a quantity of stained glass of a very poor period, and let in gusts of fresh air, in which the dead leaves of doctrine danced with all the energy and indecorum of our Lady's Tumbler. [Source- Wisdom and Innocence, p. x)

Moreover, Dorothy Sayers wrote:

"I think, in some ways, G.K.'s books have become more a part of my mental make-up than those of any writer you could name" [Source- Wisdom and Innocence, p.484]

-Considered by many the greatest Thomistic scholar of the twentieth century, Etienne Gilson described Chesterton's biography St. Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox in this way (emphasis mine):

I consider it as being without possible comparison the best book ever written on St. Thomas. Nothing short of genius can account for such an achievement. Everybody will no doubt admit that it is a 'clever' book, but the few readers who have spent twenty or thirty years in studying St. Thomas. . . cannot fail to perceive that the so-called 'wit' of Chesterton has put their scholarship to shame. He has guessed all that which we had tried to demonstrate, and he has said all that which they were more or less clumsily attempting to express in academic formulas. Chesterton was one of the deepest thinkers who ever existed; he was deep because he was right; and he could not help being right; but he could not either help being modest and charitable, so he left it to those who could understand him to know that he was right, and deep; to the others, he apologized for being right, and he made up for being deep by being witty. That is all they can see of him. [Source]

Also:

Yet perhaps an even more prestigious tribute was given by Eitenne Gilson, arugably the world's most highly esteemed Thomist scholar. Gilson had long been an admirer of Chesterton's writing, considering Orthodoxy 'the best piece of apologetic the century had produced', yet he was still utterly astonished by the publication of St. Thomas Aquinas: 'Chesterton makes one despair. I have been studying St. Thomas all my life and I could never have written such a book.' [Source- Wisdom and Innocence, p. 432]

Finally:

In an unpublished letter, written in 1966, to a priest in England, Gilson recalls his meeting with Chesterton in Toronto some thirty years earlier. 'Everything which I heard him say,' Gilson writes, `was an intellectual revelation. With Chesterton, more than literature is at stake. Here, in Toronto, we value him first of all, as a theologian. [Source]

Others who considered Chesterton's St. Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox the best book ever written on Aquinas included prominent Thomists such as Jacques Maritain and Anton Pegis [Source].

And, indeed, as Joseph Pearce notes:

...it is known that the Master-General of the Dominican Order, Pere Gillet, OP, was so impressed with the book that he lectured on and from it to large meetings of Dominicans. Considering that St. Thomas Aquinas was himself a Dominican- is indeed the jewel in the Dominican crown- such affirmation of the merits of Chesterton's book by the international head of the Domincan order was praise that could scarcely be surpassed. [Source- Wisdom and Innocence, p. 432]

-Pope John Paul 2's favorite theologian was Hans Urs Von Balthasar. He, in turn, was a great admirer of Chesterton. As one website describes it:

Saward points out that Balthasar, in Volume II of his masterwork, The Glory of the Lord [4] , describes how he had to make a selection of certain authors to be studied in his volumes on clerical and lay styles of theology. After listing those he has chosen -- Hopkins, Péguy, Soloviev -- Balthasar then goes on to list other thinkers he could have opted to write about: a gallery of pre-eminent figures in the history of Christian thought. Within the English tradition he mentions Newman and Chesterton as writers he could have studied besides Hopkins. It is remarkable, says Saward, that Chesterton is included in such august company, a "short list" that consists of Newman, Origen, Augustine, Aquinas, and Bernard. To be numbered in these ranks, among the giants of Western thought, is a supreme honour. Indeed, in speaking of all those he did not include, Balthasar uses words like "all these great ones," and "the great names". Chesterton is considered one of these "great ones." [Source]

-At his death in 1936, Pope Pius XI gave Chesterton the title "Defender of the Faith", becoming only the third person ever in the history of the Catholic Church to receive such a title from a pope (Source- Our Sunday Visitor's Catholic Encyclopedia, 1991, p. 293)

-Chesterton wrote the introduction to the first book ever written by 1950's television star Archbishop Fulton Sheen. The book is God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy (1925), and you can read the introduction here.

(You can also read more about Archbishop Sheen here. In brief, however, Archbishop Sheen was a 1950's television star whose ABC show Life is Worth Living, which aired on Tuesday nights, drew up to 30 million viewers a week, with ratings that would beat those of Milton Berle. Also, the cause for his canonization as a Saint in the Catholic Church has been opened by the Church, so that he has the title "Servant of God")

And Archbishop Sheen wrote in his autobiography Treasure of Clay concerning those who most influenced his writing:

The greatest influence in writing was G.K. Chesterton, who never used a useless word, who saw the value of a paradox and avoided what was trite [Source]

-When he died, Charles Williams of the Inklings stated: "The last of my lords is dead." [Source- Literay Converts, Joseph Pearce, p. 191]

-Williams also referred to Chesterton as "One of the first poets of our time" [Source- Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, Volume 10, part II, xi]

-George Sayer (whose encouragement led J.R.R. Tolkien to resubmit The Lord of the Rings for publication), was a fan of Chesterton's. According to one obituary:

As a reason for reading English with [C.S.] Lewis, Sayer listed poets he enjoyed. Citing G.K Chesterton, he began quoting The Ballad of the White Horse from memory [Source]

-Peter Kreeft and Fr. Ron Tacelli write:

The most enlightening single book we have ever read on the subject of comparitive religions and the uniqueness of Christ is the book that, more than any other, converted C.S. Lewis, namely G.K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man. [Source- Handbook of Christian Apologetics, p. 358]

-Evangelical author Philip Yancey devoted a chapter to Chesterton in his book Soul Survivor, calling him The Ample Man Who Saved My Faith (link to online chapter of the book provided)

Yancey writes:

When someone asked Chesterton what one book he would want to have along if stranded on a desert island, he paused only an instant before replying, "Why, A Practical Guide to Shipbuilding, of course." If I were so stranded, and could choose one book apart from the Bible, I may well select Chesterton's own spiritual autobiography, Orthodoxy (1909).[Source]

-Another fan of Chesterton is Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias, who frequently quotes him. He writes: "It was Chesterton’s Orthodoxy that most shaped my life and my apologetic. It is one of the greatest books ever written." Also: "One particular chapter in Orthodoxy, 'The Ethics of Elfland,' is one of the greatest chapters ever penned in the English language." [Source]

-Randy Alcorn lists Chesterton's The Everlasting Man among his favorite non-fiction books [Source]

-Chuck Colson is also a fan of GKC. [Source]

-Chesterton was the favorite author of CCM musician Rich Mullins.

Orthodoxy was Mullins' favorite book after the Bible [Source]

In Mullins' song Creed, part of it states: "I did not make it no it is making me", which is based on Chesterton's line in the first chapter of Orthodoxy where Chesterton writes concerning Christianity: "I will not call it my philosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it made me."

Similarly, Mullins' song Growing Young states:

Well we are children no more we have sinned and grown old
And our Father still waits and He watches down the road
To see the crying boys come running back to His arms
And be growing young
Growing young

Which is based on Chesterton's statement in Orthodoxy, in the chapter "The Ethics of Elfland", where he writes:

"...we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we."

-Members of the band Jars of Clay are "avid fans" of Chesterton [Source]

-In addition, Aaron Sand (who was formerly of Jars of Clay writes:

I love the writings of G.K. Chesterton. The second-most quoted person in the English language other than Shakespeare, he had the ability to speak and write eloquently and pointedly. He was not afraid to hit the debate table, even with the toughest challengers of his day (arguably with the greatest thinkers of the past 2-300 years). I often ponder why I enjoy his perspective of the world--and his ability to bring it to life through words. Each time I come to the same conclusion. He saw the upside-down nature of the world, the presence of paradox, and instead of running from it or pretending it wasn't there, he brought it to life and peace...

...Chesterton helps me sit in these words a little deeper. When I read his essays, stories, letters, and poetry, I feel like I'm looking at the world through the eyes of a child. And I begin to trust without knowing, love without understanding, and believe without seeing just a little bit more [Source]

-And Peter Furler of the Newsboys is "always absorbing Chesterton" [Source]

-Former White House Press Secretary Tony Snow listed G.K. Chesterton's classic Christian apologetics book Orthodoxy first in his list of "must read" books. As Snow put it so well: "Chesterton didn’t write with a pen; he wrote with fireworks. [Source]

-A portrait of Cheslea Clinton, done in colored pencil and portraying the teenager as a heavenly angel, can be seen hanging in Hillary Clinton's study. The artist, Sue Shanahan of Mokena Illinois, inscribed the drawing with "Angels fly because they take themselves lightly," a familiar Chesterton quotation.

Chicago Tribune, September 11, 1994, Tempo p. 1.

-He is the favorite writer of Scott Derrickson (director of The Exorcism of Emily Rose) [Source]

-Pope Benedict XVI has stated that "GK Chesterton was often blessed with the gift of a striking turn of phrase." [Source- In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall, p. 79]

-He is often referred to as the most quoted writer in the English language [Source]

Indeed, Chesterton is quoted or paraphrased by Presidents and Popes alike. For instance, by:

Presidents:
-JFK [Source]
-Ronald Reagan [Source]; for an example of Reagan quoting him, see here
-George W. Bush [Source]

Popes:
-Popes John Paul 1. OK, not exactly a quote...rather a "letter" he wrote to Chesterton, though Chesterton had been dead for decades. The complete letter can be found here: [Source]
-Pope Benedict 16, besides the quote given earlier, has referenced Chesterton on other occasions: [Source]

No doubt one could find more Presidents and Popes quoting him (those are just what I found without even looking)

-There is an effort underway supporting the canonization of G.K. Chesterton himself, which received encouragement from Cardinal Carter, the former archbishop of Toronto. [Source]. Imagine, a "Saint GKC"!

-Finally, if you wish to read some Chesterton quotes (though they are so few that it barely scratches the surface, and omits many of his best quotes!), then go here, and for some of his poetry, go here.