6 h 17 minAudiobook8 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 6 h 17 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if a piece of chalk could change the way you see an ordinary day?
In Tremendous Trifles, G. K. Chesterton starts small: a walk, a railway journey, a morning in bed. These short essays turn familiar moments into cheerful arguments about how we see. A joke opens the door; a serious question waits just behind it. What do we miss when we stop paying attention?
In A Piece of Chalk, Chesterton sets out to draw with coloured chalks on brown paper. Elsewhere, streets, towns and weather give him reasons to pause and think. Through wordplay, paradox and odd comparisons, he explores small things with large meanings, the link between gratitude and wonder, and why daily life deserves a closer look.
What you’ll discover
- Small things, large meanings Discover how a passing detail becomes the starting point for a much larger question.
- A Piece of Chalk Follow an outing with coloured chalks and brown paper into a fresh way of looking.
- Paradox with a purpose Enjoy playful contradictions that challenge habit and make the familiar seem strange again.
- Gratitude and wonder Explore Chesterton’s belief that thankfulness and wonder belong together in the way we see.
- Everyday life worth noticing Find streets, journeys and weather treated as subjects for thought, not gaps between important events.
Who will love it
You will love this if you enjoy playful essays, quick jokes with a serious point, walks through towns and fields, and the pleasure of seeing everyday things in a new light.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Wonder comes from looking, not from travelling
- The things in your pocket are poetry
- Small accidents teach large truths
- Strange fragments of life need no solution
- Matter is moved by invisible spirit
- Ordinary people see better than experts
- Travel is a way back to home
- Cheerful scorn for snobbery, success and fashion
- Old human things last because they are alive
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- 15-minute summary
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- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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Read and hear Gewaltige Kleinigkeiten in 25 languages and switch at any time. Or read two side by side, paragraph by paragraph: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Gewaltige Kleinigkeiten
by G. K. Chesterton · 1909
A writer sits on a chalk hill, falls out of a cab and finds wonder in a toy shop window.
Medium level5–10 hours to read25 languages
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In short
What happens if you stare at a lamppost, a piece of chalk or a toy shop window until it becomes an adventure? He tells of a cab ride, a croquet game, a train carrying a dead man and an inn near Besançon in France whose name means the end of the world.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Wonder comes from looking, not from travelling
Chesterton opens with a fable about two boys named Paul and Peter. A milkman, who is secretly a fairy, offers each one any wish. Paul asks to be a giant, and Peter asks to be a pygmy half an inch tall.
Paul strides off to see Niagara and the Himalayas and finds them small and silly from so high up. He lies down bored across some prairies, and a backwoodsman with an axe ends his career. Peter, shrunk to the size of a beetle, walks through grass like a jungle and is still exploring it. Chesterton says plainly that he is the pygmy. He sets himself against the school of Rudyard Kipling, which hunts for wonder across continents, and says his own school stares at the man in the frock coat until the man inside appears.
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What is Tremendous Trifles about?
It is a collection of short essays by G. K. Chesterton, first printed in a newspaper. Each begins with a small event, such as a cab ride or a visit to a toy shop, and draws a larger idea from it.
What does the title Tremendous Trifles mean?
It means that small, ordinary things can be enormous when looked at closely. Chesterton uses the fable of Peter the pygmy to say that molehills are mountains and that wonder is found near home.
Are the stories in Tremendous Trifles true?
Chesterton says some happened to him, such as the cab accident and the meeting with a farmer who looked like President Kruger, while others are fables. The essays first appeared in a daily newspaper in the early 1900s.
The author
G. K. Chesterton
1874–1936 · English writer and Christian apologist
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) was an English writer born in London. He wrote novels, essays, poems and plays. His books include Heretics (1905), The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) and The Innocence of Father Brown (1911). He moved to Beaconsfield in 1909 and lived there until his death.
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