Has it never struck you that a man who does next to nothing but hears men's real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil?
I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it.
Your offer, he said, is far too idiotic to be declined.
You attacked reason, said Father Brown. It’s bad theology.
The modern mind is hard to please; and it generally calls the way of Godfrey ferocious and the way of Francis fanatical. That is, it calls any moral method unpractical, when it has just called any pra...
Nobody can understand the greatness of the thirteenth century, who does not realize that it was a great growth of new things produced by a living thing. In that sense it was really bolder and freer th...
Nine times out of ten a man’s broad-mindedness is necessarily the narrowest thing about him. This is not particularly paradoxical; it is, when we come to think of it, quite inevitable. His vision of h...
He was one of those who are driven early in life into too conservative an attitude by the bewildering folly of most revolutionists.
For these disguises did not disguise, but reveal.
Evil always wins through the strength of its splendid dupes; and there has in all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and abnormal sin.
But when fundamentals are doubted, as at present, we must try to recoverthe candour and wonder of the child; the unspoilt realism and objectivity of innocence. Or if we cannot do that, wemust try at l...
no life of faith can be lived privately. There must be an overflow into the lives of others.
Brown paper represents the primal twilight of the first toil of creation, and with a bright-coloured chalk or two you can pick out points of fire in it, sparks of gold, and blood-red, and sea-green, l...
There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.
Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.
There is a certain solid use in fools. It is not so much that they rush in where angels fear to tread, but rather that they let out what devils intend to do.
The secret of life lies in laughter and humility.
No,' said Gould, with an unusual and convincing gravity; 'I do not believe that being perfectly good in all respects would make a man merry.' 'Well,' said Michael quietly, 'will you tell me one thing?...
The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman. But the mater...
There nearly always is a method in madness.