The suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and ragged as a cloud of sunset. It was built of a bright brick throughout; its sky-line was fantastic, and even its ground plan was...
People like frequent laughter, answered Father Brown, but I don't think they like a permanent smile. Cheerfulness without humour is a very trying thing.
Modern tragic writers have to write short stories; if they wrote long stories…cheerfulness would creep in. Such stories are like stings; brief, but purely painful.
In the lower classes the school master does not work for the parent, but against the parent. Modern education meanshanding down the customs of the minority, and rooting out the customs of the majority...
In most commercial ways we’re a pretty forward country. In these moral ways we’re content to be a pretty backward country.
I do not know by what extraordinary mental accident modern writers so constantly connect the idea of progress with the idea of independent thinking. Progress is obviously the antithesis of independent...
He has come to the most dreadful conclusion a literary man can come to, the conclusion that the ordinary view is the right one. It is only the last and wildest kind of courage that can stand on a towe...
Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank peo...
Once men sang together round a table in chorus; now one man sings alone, for the absurd reason that he can sing better. If our civilization goes on like this, only one man will laugh, because he can l...
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero, but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. It does much more than that, it tells us the truth about its readers; and, oddly enough, it tells u...
The work of the philosophical policeman," replied the man in blue, "is at once bolder and more subtle than that of the ordinary detective. The ordinary detective goes to pot-houses to arrest thieves;...
It [feminism] is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands.
Of being strong and brave. The strong can not be brave. Only the weak can be brave; and yet again, in practice, only those who can be brave can be trusted, in time of doubt, to be strong.
We’re all really dependent in nearly everything, and we all make a fuss about being independent in something.
We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press.
We are learning to do a great many clever things…The next great task will be to learn not to do them.
There cannot be a nation of millionaires, and there never has been a nation of Utopian comrades; but there have been any number of nations of tolerably contented peasants.
There are, I believe, some who still deny that England is governed by an oligarchy. It is quite enough for me to know that a man might have gone to sleep some thirty years ago over the day's newspaper...
The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.
The truth is people who worship health cannot remain healthy on the point.