"An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered"
About this Quote
The subtext is Chesterton’s broader campaign against modern disenchantment. Writing in an England being reorganized by bureaucracy, industrial schedules, and the dull authority of “common sense,” he makes inconvenience sound like a failure of imagination - and, implicitly, a capitulation to a flattened world. Calling something an adventure restores scale: it turns the blocked street, the missed train, the rainstorm into plot rather than punishment. That’s why the sentence is so compact: “inconvenience” evokes small, petty suffering; “adventure” evokes risk, story, and agency. The pivot is psychological, but it’s also social: a culture that can’t metabolize minor adversity without grievance is a culture that has forgotten how to be surprised.
Chesterton isn’t denying hardship; he’s taking aim at the reflex to treat friction as injustice. The wit disguises a serious intent: to re-enchant the ordinary and to remind the modern mind that irritation is often just boredom with reality wearing a principled face.
Quote Details
| Topic | Optimism |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Chesterton, Gilbert K. (2026, January 17). An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/an-inconvenience-is-an-adventure-wrongly-31365/
Chicago Style
Chesterton, Gilbert K. "An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/an-inconvenience-is-an-adventure-wrongly-31365/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/an-inconvenience-is-an-adventure-wrongly-31365/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.










