It is ludicrous to suppose that the more sceptical we are the more we see good in everything. It is clear that the more we are certain what good is, the more we shall see good in everything.
It is largely because the free-thinkers, as a school, have hardly made up their minds whether they want to be more optimist or more pessimist than Christianity that their small but sincere movement ha...
It is in our own daily life that we are to look for the portents and the prodigies.... Compared with this life, all public life, all fame, all wisdom, is by its nature cramped and cold and small. For...
Is that all? asked Flambeau after a long pause. Have we got to the dull truth at last?Oh, no, said Father Brown.As the wind died in the most distant pine woods with a long hoot as of mockery Father Br...
Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason.
I told Mr. Rook you were disinherited and he rushed back to help you. Mr. Rook is a rather remarkable person.Oh, chuck it, said Mr. Rook with a hostile air.Mr. Rook is a monster, said Father Brown wit...
I earnestly hope that all children will spoil this book by painting the illustrations. I wanted to do this myself but the publishers would not let me. But let the colours you lay on be violent, gorgeo...
I do not say that there are no stronger men than these; but will any one say that there are any men stronger than those men of old who were dominated by their philosophy and steeped in their religion?...
I can hardly conceive of any educated man believing in God at all without believing that God contains in Himself every perfection including eternal joy; and does not require the solar system to entert...
Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.
His soul swayed in a vertigo of moral indecision. He had only to snap the thread of a rash vow made to a villainous society, and all his life could be as open and sunny as the square beneath him. He h...
Flippancy is a flower whose roots are often underground in the subconsciousness.
Christianity is always out of fashion because it is always sane; and all fashions are mild insanities. When Italy is mad on art the Church seems too Puritanical; when England is mad on Puritanism the...
But whenever one meets modern thinkers (as one often does) progressing towards a madhouse, one always finds, on inquiry, that they have just had a splendid escape from another madhouse. Thus, hundreds...
But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, Do it again to the sun.; and every evening, Do it again to the moon. It may not be automatic monotony...
But in order that life should be a story or romance to us, it is necessary that a great part of it, at any rate, should be settled for us without our permission. If we wish life to be a system, this m...
But anyhow it is true that this, which is our first poem, might very well be our last poem too. It might well be the last word as well as the first word spoken by man about his mortal lot, as seen by...
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 dev...
All that is mererationalism; the superstition (that is the unreasoning repugnanceand terror) is in the person who admits there can be angels but
The wind blew out from Bergen from the dawning to the day,There was a wreck of trees and fall of towers a score of miles away,And drifted like a livid leaf I go before its tide,Spewed out of house and...