Tremendous Trifles
G.K. Chesterton performs a rather daring trick in these pages: he convinces you that a piece of chalk is the gateway to the infinite, that standing in a field might be an adventure worthy of Odysseus, and that the most trivial things contain the most enormous secrets. This collection of thirty-nine essays and sketches, written with the irrepressible joy of a man who has just discovered the world is stranger and more magnificent than anyone dared believe, invites readers to slow down and actually look at what they have been too busy to see. The book opens with an allegory of two boys who wish to become a giant and a pygmy, and what they discover in their transformed states proves Chesterton's central conviction: that perspective is everything, and that the small can be vast and the vast can be small. Through whimsy, argument, and sheer verbal wizardry, he defends the jury system, argues for reading fairy tales to children, and demonstrates how a drawing exercise becomes a meditation on truth. This is philosophy disguised as entertainment, or perhaps entertainment disguised as philosophy. Either way, it is a book that remakes the reader's eyes so that ordinary life looks, at last, properly astonishing.
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“The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.””
— G. K. Chesterton
“Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.””
— G. K. Chesterton
“Lying in bed would be an altogether supreme experience if one only had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.””
— G. K. Chesterton
“Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.””
— G. K. Chesterton
“He is a [sane] man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head.””
— G. K. Chesterton
“You cannot grow a beard in a moment of passion.””
— G. K. Chesterton
“I have my doubts about all this real value in mountaineering, in getting to the top of everything and overlooking everything. Satan was the most celebrated of Alpine guides, when he took Jesus to the top of an exceeding high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the earth. But the joy of Satan in standing on a peak is not a joy in largeness, but a joy in beholding smallness, in the fact that all men look like insects at his feet. It is from the valley that things look large; it is from the level that things look high; I am a child of the level and have no need of that celebrated Alpine guide. I will lift up my eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help; but I will not lift up my carcass to the hills, unless it is absolutely necessary. Everything is in an attitude of mind; and at this moment I am in a comfortable attitude. I will sit still and let the marvels and the adventures settle on me like flies. There are plenty of them, I assure you. The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.””
— G. K. Chesterton
“Our civilization has decided, and very justly decided, that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. It wishes for light upon that awful matter, it asks men who know no more law than I know, but who can feel the thing that I felt in that jury box. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.””
— G. K. Chesterton
“Of a sane man there is only one safe definition. He is the man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head.””
— G. K. Chesterton
