Father Brown Quotes

“Are you a devil?"
"I am a man," answered Father Brown gravely; "and therefore have all devils in my heart.”
― Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)

“Never be afraid to try something new. Remember professionals built the Titanic but an amateur built the ark.”
― Father Brown

“It's just because I have picked a little about mystics that I have no use for mystagogues. Real mystics don't hide mysteries, they reveal them. They set a thing up in broad daylight, and when you've seen it it's still a mystery. But the mystagogues hide a thing in darkness and secrecy, and when you find it, it's a platitude.”
― G. K. Chesterton

“If you try to talk about a truth that’s merely moral, people always think it’s merely metaphorical. A real live man with two legs once said to me: ‘I only believe in the Holy Ghost in a spiritual sense.’ Naturally, I said: ‘In what other sense could you believe it?’ And then he thought I meant he needn’t believe in anything except evolution, or ethical fellowship, or some bilge. . . .

-- The Secret of Father Brown”
― G. K. Chesterton

“The Vernon Hotel at which The Twelve True Fishermen held their annual dinners was an institution such as can only exist in an oligarchical society which has almost gone mad on good manners.”
― G. K. Chesterton, The innocence of Father Brown (Classic Detective Stories of Mystery): With Illustrated Edition

“Madness and despair are innocent enough. There are worse things, Flambeau.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Sign of the Broken Sword: A Father Brown Mystery

“None of us can censor our feelings, Mr Digby, only our actions”
― G.K. Chesterton

“My brain and this world don't fit each other”
― Hercule Flambeau