Saturday, February 19, 2011

The Quotable Chesterton Review


Every time I picked up Kevin Belmonte’s anthology of G. K. Chesterton, I felt like a child on a beach outing who starts out to gather only the special shells, the particularly colorful or unusually shaped ones, but ends up with a sack full.

The Quotable Chesterton is a veritable treasure trove of sagacious delights. From the pithy aphorism: “A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it,” to an orderly reflection on Reasons To Believe; from the humorous: “A knife is never bad except on such rare occasions as that in which it is neatly and scientifically planted in the middle of one’s back,” to the profound: “Faith is always at a disadvantage; it is a perpetually defeated thing which survives all its conquerors, nothing is off limits for Chesterton.

And Kevin Belmonte has done us the favor of rounding up and setting down an impressive collection of this literary giant’s timeless wit and wisdom. Included throughout the anthology are informative essays that give the reader deeper glimpses into Chesterton’s life.

A wonderful book for the bedside, desktop, bookshelf, or bathroom, regardless if only for a quick stop or a long reflection.

This book was provided for me by the publisher, Thomas Nelson, Inc., through Booksneeze.


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