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The Complete Father Brown QUOTES

The Complete Father Brown QUOTES

1 " It really is more natural to believe a preternatural story, that deals with things we don’t understand, than a natural story that contradicts things we do understand. Tell me that the great Mr Gladstone, in his last hours, was haunted by the ghost of Parnell, and I will be agnostic about it. But tell me that Mr Gladstone, when first presented to Queen Victoria, wore his hat in her drawing-room and slapped her on the back and offered her a cigar, and I am not agnostic at all. That is not impossible; it’s only incredible. But I’m much more certain it didn’t happen than that Parnell’s ghost didn’t appear; because it violates the laws of the world I do understand. "

― G.K. Chesterton , The Complete Father Brown

2 " You are my only friend in the world, and I want to talk to you. Or, perhaps, be silent with you. "

― G.K. Chesterton , The Complete Father Brown

3 " Everybody talks about foul dens and filthy slums in which crime can run riot; but it's just the other way. They are called foul, not because crimes are committed, but because crimes are discovered. It's in the neat, spotless, clean and tidy places that crime can run riot; no mud to make footprints; no dregs to contain poison; kind servants washing out all traces of the murder; and the murderer killing and cremating six wives and all for want of a little Christian dirt. "

― G.K. Chesterton , The Complete Father Brown

4 " There’s another thing you’ve got to remember. You talk about these highbrows having a higher art and a more philosophical drama. But remember what a lot of the philosophy is! Remember what sort of conduct those highbrows often present to the highest! All about the Will to Power and the Right to Live and the Right to Experience — damned nonsense and more than damned nonsense — nonsense that can damn.” Father "

― G.K. Chesterton , The Complete Father Brown

5 " The priest looked puzzled also, as if at his own thoughts; he sat with knotted brow and then said abruptly: ‘You see, it’s so easy to be misunderstood. All men matter. You matter. I matter. It’s the hardest thing in theology to believe. "

― G.K. Chesterton , The Complete Father Brown

6 " No man's really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be; till he's realised exactly how much right he has to all this snobbery, and sneering, and talking about 'criminals,' as if they were apes in a forest ten thousand miles away; till he's got rid of all the dirty self-deception of talking about low types and deficient skulls; till he's squeezed out of his soul the last drop of the oil of the Pharisees; till his only hope is somehow or other to have captured one criminal, and kept him safe and sane under his own hat. "

― G.K. Chesterton , The Complete Father Brown

7 " We have to touch such men, not with a bargepole, but with a benediction,” he said. “We have to say the word that will save them from hell. We alone are left to deliver them from despair when your human charity deserts them. Go on your own primrose path pardoning all your favourite vices and being generous to your fashionable crimes; and leave us in the darkness, vampires of the night, to console those who really need consolation; who do things really indefensible, things that neither the world nor they themselves can defend; and none but a priest will pardon. Leave us with the men who commit the mean and revolting and real crimes; mean as St. Peter when the cock crew, and yet the dawn came. "

― G.K. Chesterton , The Complete Father Brown

8 " There was a man who had a fly in his eye when he looked through the telescope, and he discovered that there was a most incredible dragon in the moon. "

― G.K. Chesterton , The Complete Father Brown

9 " And that is just the note; that’s the unmistakable style. People who complain are just jolly, human Christian nuisances; I don’t mind them. But people who complain that they never complain are the devil. They are really the devil; isn’t that swagger of stoicism the whole point of the Byronic cult of Satan? I heard all this; but for the life of me I couldn’t hear of anything tangible she had to complain of. "

― G.K. Chesterton , The Complete Father Brown

10 " We matter to God — God only knows why. "

― G.K. Chesterton , The Complete Father Brown

11 " There is a limit to human charity," said Lady Outram, trembling all over.

"There is," said Father Brown dryly, "and that is the real difference between human charity and Christian charity. You must forgive me if I was not altogether crushed by your contempt for my uncharitableness today; or by the lectures you read me about pardon for every sinner. For it seems to me that you only pardon the sins that you don't really think sinful. You only forgive criminals when they commit what you don't regard as crimes, but rather as conventions. So you tolerate a conventional duel, just as you tolerate a conventional divorce. You forgive because there isn't anything to be forgiven. "

― G.K. Chesterton , The Complete Father Brown

12 " People will tell you that theories don’t matter and that logic and philosophy aren’t practical. Don’t you believe them. Reason is from God, and when things are unreasonable there is something the matter. "

― G.K. Chesterton , The Complete Father Brown

13 " No,” said the other priest; “reason is always reasonable, even in the last limbo, in the lost borderland of things. I know that people charge the Church with lowering reason, but it is just the other way. Alone on earth, the Church makes reason really supreme. Alone on earth, the Church affirms that God himself is bound by reason. "

― G.K. Chesterton , The Complete Father Brown

14 " it might be questioned whether hammering is more of a strain on the attention because it may go on for ever, or because it may stop at any minute. "

― G.K. Chesterton , The Complete Father Brown

15 " There are two ways of renouncing the devil,” he said; “and the difference is perhaps the deepest chasm in modern religion. One is to have a horror of him because he is so far off; and the other to have it because he is so near. And no virtue and vice are so much divided as those two virtues. "

― G.K. Chesterton , The Complete Father Brown

16 " Go on,” said the priest very gently. “We are only trying to find the truth. What are you afraid of?” “I am afraid of finding it,” said Flambeau. "

― G.K. Chesterton , The Complete Father Brown

17 " Do you remember what Douglas said when Marmion, his guest, offered to shake hands with him?” “Yes,” said Father Brown. “‘My castles are my king’s alone, from turret to foundation stone,’” said Musgrave. “‘The hand of Douglas is his own.’” He "

― G.K. Chesterton , The Complete Father Brown

18 " Father Brown tossed the paper on the floor and sat bolt upright in his chair. ‘You mustn’t let that sort of stuff stupefy you,’ he said sharply. ‘These devils always try to make us helpless by making us hopeless. "

― G.K. Chesterton , The Complete Father Brown

19 " But Maurice was clean-shaven, and, by the portraits shown to me, certainly quite beautiful; though he looked a little more like a tenor than a gentleman ought to look. James "

― G.K. Chesterton , The Complete Father Brown

20 " Dog doesn’t eat dog, and doctors don’t bite doctors, not even when they are mad doctors. I shouldn’t care to cast any reflection on my eminent predecessor in Potter’s Pond, if I could avoid it; "

― G.K. Chesterton , The Complete Father Brown