Gilbert Keith Chesterton

“ Crooke was looking at him.
Hibbs coughed considerately and said, "Of course all our things came from the East, and"--and he paused, being suddenly unable to remember anything but curry; to which he was very rightly attached. He then remembered Christianity, and mentioned that too. "Everything from the East is good, of course," he ended, with an air of light omniscience.
Those who in later ages and other fashions failed to understand how Misysra had ever got a mental hold on men like Lord Ivywood, left out two elements in the man, which are very attractive, especially to other men. ”

“ And what you see in prescriptions as _Cannabis Indiensis_ is what our lively neighbours of Asia describe more energetically as bhang."
"And so-o--in the sa-ame way," said Misysra, making soothing passes with his brown hand like a mesmerist, "in the sa-ame way the making of the crescent is hy-gienic; the making of the cross is non-hy-gienic. The crescent was a little wave, as a leaf, as a little curling feather," and he waved his hand with real artistic enthusiasm toward the capering curves of the new Turkish decoration which Ivywood had made fashionable in many of the fashionable shops. ”

“ And after a vague but soothing conversation with the chemist (on the subject of vitriol and its effects on human happiness) , Mr. Hibbs experienced the acute annoyance of once more beholding his most intimate friend, Mr. Joseph Leveson, enter the same fashionable emporium. But, indeed, Leveson's own annoyance was much too acute for him to notice any on the part of Hibbs.
"Well," he said, stopping dead in the middle of the shop, "here is a fine confounded kettle of fish!"
It is one of the tragedies of the diplomatic that they are not allowed to admit either knowledge or ignorance ”

“ The marching crowd turned two or three corners, and at the end of the next long street, Dorian Wimpole, who was toward the tail of the procession, saw again the grey Cyclops tower of St. Stephens, with its one great golden eye, as he had seen it against that pale green sunset that was at once quiet and volcanic on the night he was betrayed by sleep and by a friend. Almost as far off, at the head of the procession, he could see the sign with the ship and the cross going before them like an ensign, and hear a great voice singing--
"Men that are men again, Who goes home? ”

“ And he turned first to the Prophet.
"You will see mosques," said that seer with candour, "many mosques--more mosques--taller and taller mosques till they reach the moon and you bear a dreadful voice in the very high mosque calling the muezzin; and you will think it is Allah. Then you will see wives--many, many wives--more wives than you yet have. Then you will be rolled over and over in a great pink and purple sea--which is still wives. Then you will go to sleep. ”

“ Crooke WHEN the celebrated Hibbs next visited the shop of Crooke, that mystic and criminologist chemist, he found the premises were impressively and even amazingly enlarged with decorations in the eastern style. Indeed, it would not have been too much to say that Mr. Crooke's shop occupied the whole of one side of a showy street in the West End; the other side being a blank façade of public buildings. It would be no exaggeration to say that Mr. Crooke was the only shopkeeper for some distance round. Mr. Crooke still served in his shop, however ”

“ But it doesn't seem to occur to you, any more than it did to his lordship, that there is rather a weak point after all in this business of passing acts quietly because they're unpopular. Has it ever occurred to you that if a law is really kept too quiet to be opposed, it may also be kept too quiet to be obeyed. ”

“ I do not pretend to believe in democracy, as you know, but I think it would be extremely unsettling and incalculable to destroy representative government. If we are to give Moslem Britain representative government, we must not make the mistake we made about the Hindoos and military organization--which led to the Mutiny. ”