Gilbert Keith Chesterton

“ The astronomers are always telling us that it is shaped like an orange, or like an egg, or like a German sausage. They beat the old world about like a bladder and thump it into a thousand shapeless shapes. Turnbull, we cannot trust the ball to be always a ball; we cannot trust reason to be reasonable. In the end the great terrestrial globe will go quite lop-sided, and only the cross will stand upright."
There was a long silence, and then Turnbull said, hesitatingly: "Has it occurred to you that since--since those two dreams, or whatever they were----"
"Well?" murmured MacIan. ”

“ I believe we are the sanest. That is the only real question--whether the Church is really madder than the world. Let the rationalists run their own race, and let us see where they end. If the world has some healthy balance other than God, let the world find it. Does the world find it? Cut the world loose," he cried with a savage gesture. "Does the world stand on its own end? Does it stand, or does it stagger?"
Turnbull remained silent, and MacIan said to him, looking once more at the earth: "It staggers, Turnbull. It cannot stand by itself ”

“ But all England has gone into captivity in order to take us captive. All England has turned into a lunatic asylum in order to prove us lunatics. Compared with the general public, I might positively be called sane. ”

“ They are monotonous and maddening. The man you have just been talking to, poor fellow, is one of the strongest cases of pure idee fixe that we have. It's very sad, and I'm afraid utterly incurable. He keeps on telling everybody"--and the doctor lowered his voice confidentially--"he tells everybody that two people have taken his yacht. His account of how he lost it is quite incoherent."
Turnbull stamped his foot on the gravel path, and called out: "Oh, I can't stand this. ”