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The Man Who Was Thursday
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The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) (edit title/settings)

A Nightmare

by G. K. Chesterton (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

G. K. Chesterton's surreal masterpiece is a psychological thriller that centers on seven anarchists in turn-of-the-century London who call themselves by the names of the days of the week. Chesterton explores the meanings of their disguised identities in what is a fascinating mystery and,... read more

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  • “There is a great deal to be said for death; but if anyone has any preference for the other alternative, I strongly advise him to walk after me.”
  • “We deny the snobbish English assumption that the uneducated are the dangerous criminals. We remember the Roman Emperors. We remember the great poisoning princes of the Renaissance. We say that the dangerous criminal is the educated criminal.”
  • “The common criminal is a bad man, but at least he is, as it were, a conditional good man. He says that if only a certain obstacle be removed -- say a wealthy uncle -- he is then prepared to accept the universe and to praise God. He is a reformer, but not an anarchist. He wishes to cleanse the edifice, but not to destroy it. But the evil philosopher is not trying to alter things, but to annihilate them”
  • “The moderns say we must not punish heretics. My only doubt is whether we have a right to punish anybody else.”
  • “Through all this ordeal his root horror had been isolation, and there are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one. That is why, in spite of a hundred disadvantages, the world will always return to monogamy.”
  • “You’ve got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than any one else in there being some decent government. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always been objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists, as you can see from the barons’ wars.”
  • “Listen to me. Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front —”
  • “Being surrounded with every conceivable kind of revolt from infancy, Gabriel had to revolt into something, so he revolted into the only thing left — Sanity”
  • “Yes, you are right. I am afraid of him. Therefore I swear by God that I will seek out this man whom I fear until I find him and strike him on the mouth. If heaven were his throne and the earth his footstool I swear that I would pull him down. . . . Because I am afraid of him; and no man should leave in the universe anything of which he is afraid.”
    Syme
  • “Why is it, he asked vaguely, that I think you are quite a decent fellow? Why do I positively like you, Gregory?" He paused a moment, then added with a sort of fresh curiosity, "Is it because you are such an ass?”
    Gabriel Syme
  • “"You are a devil!" said Gregory at last."And you are a gentleman," said Syme with gravity.”
  • “Vulgar people are never mad. I'm vulgar myself, and I know.”
    Dr. Bull
  • “Then I made up as a millionaire; but I defended Capital with so much intelligence that a fool could see I was quite poor.”
    Lucian Gregory
  • “We say that the most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men; my heart goes out to them. They accept the essential ideal of man; they merely seek it wrongly. Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy the very idea of personal possession. Bigamists respect marriage, or they would not go through the highly ceremonial and even ritualistic formality of bigamy. But philosophers despise marriage as marriage. Murderers respect human life; they merely wish to attain a greater fulness of human life in themselves by the sacrifice of what seems to them to be lesser lives. But philosophers hate life itself, their own as much as other people's.”
  • “"Dawn was breaking over everything in colours at once clear and timid; as if Nature made a first attempt at yellow and a first attempt at rose. A breeze blew so clean ad sweet that one could not think that it blew from the sky; it blew rather through some hole in the sky."”
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First Sentence edit see section history

The suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and ragged as a cloud of sunset.

Table of Contents edit see section history

I. The Two Poets of Saffron park
II. The Secret of Gabriel Syme
III. The Man Who Was Thursday
IV. The Tale of a Detective
V. The Feast of Fear
VI. The Exposure
VII. The Unaccountable Conduct of Professor de Worms
VIII. The Professor Explains
IX. The Man in Spectacles
X. The Duel
XI. The Criminals Chase the Police
XII. The Earth in Anarchy
XIII. The Pursuit of the President
XIV. The Six Philosophers
XV. The Accuser

Errata edit see section history

In Bruce F. Murphy's introduction to the Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading edition, it is stated that Chesterton and his friend Hilaire Belloc sympathized with anti-Semitism and fascism. This is not true, as both of them wrote essays condemning both of these positions.

Series & Lists edit see section history

This book is in Modern Library Classics. (publisher edition list)
This is book 32 of 64 in Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series. (publisher series)
This book is in Guardian 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read. (authoritative list)
This book is in Halcyon Classics. (publisher edition list)
This is book 28 of 199 in Newman and Jones 200 Best Horror Novels. (community list)
This is book 96 of 101 in Penguin English Library. (publisher series)
This book is in Penguin Classics. (publisher edition list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. G. K. Chesterton

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: J.W. Arrowsmith
Country: United Kingdom
Publication Date: 1908
ISBN: 048642250X
Page Count: 330

Awards edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
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