One of the things I have come to like most about Chesterton is that he is one of the few writers whose books you can open virtually at random, and have a good chance of finding a breathtaking insight. That happened to me on the subway this evening. From the essay “Dickens and Christmas”:
Dickens in his cheapest cockney utilitarianism was not only English, but unconsciously historic. Upon him descended the real tradition of “Merry England,” and not upon the pallid mediaevalists who thought they were reviving it. The Pre-Raphaelites, the Gothicists, the admirers of the Middle Ages, had in their subtlety and sadness the spirit of the present day. Dickens had in his buffoonery and bravery the spirit of the Middle Ages. He was much more mediaeval in his attacks on mediaevalism than they were in their defenses of it.
I am the farthest thing from a G. K. Chesterton idolater, but I must admit that the percentage of his writing that reaches this level is extremely high.