Gilbert Keith Chesterton

“ Anyhow, Mendoza could not continue, for Alvarez had sprung up and was shouting back at him and shouting him down, with infinitely superior lungs.
"Who murdered him?" he roared. "Your God murdered him! His own God murdered him! According to you, he murders all his faithful and foolish servants—as he murdered that one," and he made a violent gesture, not towards the coffin but the crucifix.
Seeming to control himself a little, he went on in a tone still angry but more argumentative: "I don't believe it, but you do. Isn't it better to have no God than one that robs you in this fashion? ”

“ But since we seek and need each other, even that eternal hatred is an eternal love. Good and evil go round in a wheel that is one thing and not many. Do you not realize in your heart, do you not believe behind all your beliefs, that there is but one reality and we are its shadows; and that all things are but aspects of one thing: a centre where men melt into Man and Man into God?"
"No," said Father Brown.
Outside, twilight had begun to fall, in that phase of such a snow-laden evening when the land looks brighter than the sky. ”

“ If the dog really could completely and consciously realize the murderer of his master, he wouldn't stand yapping as he might at a curate at a tea-party; he's much more likely to fly at his throat. And on the other hand, do you really think a man who had hardened his heart to murder an old friend and then walk about smiling at the old friend's family, under the eyes of his old friend's daughter and postmortem doctor—do you think a man like that would be doubled up by mere remorse because a dog barked? ”

“ On the shore I found the loose rock fallen from its pedestal; and poor Harry Druce lay like a wreck underneath it. One arm was thrown round it in a sort of embrace as if he had pulled it down on himself; and on the broad brown sands beside it, in large crazy lettering, he had scrawled the words, "The Rock of Fortune falls on the Fool."
"It was the Colonel's will that did that," observed Father Brown. "The young man had staked everything on profiting himself by Donald's disgrace, especially when his uncle sent for him on the same day as the lawyer, and welcomed him with so much warmth. ”

“ He looked at the corpse as if it were his own corpse lying cold in the snow. Then he spread-eagled it in that strange fashion to suggest the sweeping descent of a bird of prey, and decked it out not only in his own dark and flying garments but in a whole dark fairy-tale about the black bird that could only fall by the silver bullet. I do not know whether it was the silver glittering on the sideboard or the snow shining beyond the door that suggested to his intensely artistic temperament the theme of white magic and the white metal used against magicians. ”

“ What would it have been like, if the destroyer had been up in the daylight and had owned all the earth and commanded all the armies and the crowds? How if he had been able to stop all the earths or smoke me out of my hole or kill me the moment I put my nose out in the daylight? What was it like to deal with murder on that scale? The world has forgotten these things, as until a little while ago it had forgotten war."
"Yes," said Father Brown, "but the war came. The fish may be driven underground again, but it will come up into the daylight once more. ”

“ So it is with that tale of the curse. It isn't the legend that I disbelieve-it's the history."
Lady Diana had recovered a little from her trance of Cassandra, and her perennial curiosity about new things began to peer once more out of her bright and prominent eyes.
"What a curious man you are!" she said. "Why should you disbelieve the history?"
"I disbelieve the history because it isn't history," answered Father Brown. "To anybody who happens to know a little about the Middle Ages, the whole story was about as probable as Gladstone offering Queen Victoria a cigar. ”

“ THE ORACLE OF THE DOG
"Yes," said Father Brown, "I always like a dog, so long as he isn't spelt backwards."
Those who are quick in talking are not always quick in listening. Sometimes even their brilliancy produces a sort of stupidity. Father Brown's friend and companion was a young man with a stream of ideas and stories, an enthusiastic young man named Fiennes, with eager blue eyes and blond hair that seemed to be brushed back, not merely with a hair-brush but with the wind of the world as he rushed through it. ”

“ Nay, he will tell you quite sincerely that Buddhism is more Christian than Christianity. That alone is enough to throw a hideous and ghastly ray of light on his notion of Christianity."
"Upon my soul," said the doctor, laughing, "I can't make out whether you're denouncing or defending him."
"It isn't defending a man to say he is a genius," said Father Brown. "Far from it. And it is simply a psychological fact that an artist will betray himself by some sort of sincerity. Leonardo da Vinci cannot draw as if he couldn't draw. Even if he tried, it will always be a strong parody of a weak thing. ”

“ As he passed down the long room he saw the only window in that wall, a curious low oval window of a late-seventeenth-century fashion. But the strange thing about it was that it did not look out directly on any space of sky but only on a reflection of sky; a pale strip of daylight merely mirrored in the moat, under the hanging shadow of the bank. Payne had a memory of the Lady of Shallot who never saw the world outside except in a mirror. The lady of this Shallot not only in some sense saw the world in a mirror, but even saw the world upside-down. ”

“ I'd as soon believe in a priest who believes in a miracle, as disbelieve in any man having any right to believe in a fact. The priest tells me that a man can appeal to a God I know nothing about to avenge him by the laws of some higher justice that I know nothing about. There's nothing for me to say except that I know nothing about it. But, at least, if the poor Paddy's prayer and pistol could be heard in a higher world, that higher world might act in some way that seems odd to us. But you ask me to disbelieve the facts of this world as they appear to my own five wits. ”

“ What do you say about them as a Catholic?"
"I say I'm an agnostic," replied Father Brown, smiling.
"Nonsense," said Aylmer impatiently. "It's your business to believe things."
"Well, I do believe some things, of course," conceded Father Brown; "and therefore, of course, I don't believe other things."
Aylmer was leaning forward, and looking at him with a strange intensity that was almost like that of a mesmerist.
"You do believe it," he said. "You do believe everything. We all believe everything, even when we deny everything. The denyers believe. The unbelievers believe. ”

“ Aylmer stretched out his arm and swept the white landscape with a gesture.
"Look at the snow," he said in a deep voice that had a sort of roll and thrill in it. "Is not the snow unspotted-pure as the white magic you yourself called it? Is there a speck on it for miles, save that one foul black blot that has fallen there? There are no footprints, but a few of yours and mine; there are none approaching the house from anywhere." ”

“ If you stagnate and breed in and brood in your own swamp like that, you're bound to degenerate whether you like it or not. The laws of heredity can't be dodged; the truths of science can't be denied. The minds of the Darnaways are falling to pieces, as their blighted old sticks and stones are falling to pieces, eaten away by the sea and the salt air. Suicide—of course he committed suicide; I dare say all the rest will commit suicide. ”

“ He had already assumed the part of Arnold Aylmer. Why should not his dead enemy assume the part of John Strake? There must have been something in that topsy turveydom to take the fancy of that darkly fanciful man. It was like some frightful fancy dress ball to which the two mortal enemies were to go dressed up as each other. Only, the fancy-dress ball was to be a dance of death: and one of the dancers would be dead. That is why I can imagine that man putting it in his own mind, and I can imagine him smiling. ”

“ The moment he entered the little parlour where the rest of the company were collected, something in their pale faces told him they were shaken by something yet more recent than the accident at the tomb. Even as he entered, Leonard Smyth was saying: "Where is all this going to end?"
"It will never end, I tell you," repeated Lady Diana, gazing into vacancy with glassy eyes; "it will never end till we all end. One after another the curse will take us; perhaps slowly, as the poor vicar said; but it will take us all as it has taken him."
"What in the world has happened now?" asked Father Brown. ”

“ In half an hour the whole of that town and district had been transformed into something never known for a thousand years; a medieval people turned to a mob of monks by a staggering miracle; a Greek city where the god had descended among men. Thousands prostrated themselves in the road; hundreds took vows on the spot; and even the outsiders, like the two Americans, were able to think and speak of nothing but the prodigy. Alvarez himself was shaken, as well he might be; and sat down, with his head upon his hands. ”

“ If I want any miracles, I know where to get them."
"I can't understand your taking this line, Father Brown," said Vandam, earnestly. "It seems so narrow; and you don't look narrow to me, though you are a parson. Don't you see, a miracle like this will knock all materialism endways? It will just tell the whole world in big print that spiritual powers can work and do work. You'll be serving religion as no parson ever served it yet."
The priest had stiffened a little and seemed in some strange way clothed with unconscious and impersonal dignity, for all his stumpy figure. ”

“ I suppose a murderer never got rid of a bloody weapon so oddly and yet so naturally as by throwing it into the sea for a retriever."
"I begin to see what you mean," admitted Fiennes; "but even if a sword-stick was used, I have no guess of how it was used."
"I had a sort of guess," said Father Brown, "right at the beginning when you said the word summer-house. And another when you said that Druce wore a white coat. As long as everybody was looking for a short dagger, nobody thought of it; but if we admit a rather long blade like a rapier, it's not so impossible." ”

“ John Race went back to his lodgings sad and with a singular sense of emptiness. It seemed impossible that he should miss a man whom he never knew. He learned that the funeral was to take place next day; for all felt that the crisis should be past as quickly as possible, for fear of riots that were hourly growing more probable. When Snaith had seen the row of Red Indians sitting in the veranda, they might have been a row of ancient Aztec images carved in red wood. But he had not seen them as they were when they heard that the priest was dead. ”

“ I've no use for a black and bloody assassin of that sort in my morality, whether it's religion or not."
"He was a black and bloody assassin, no doubt," said Fenner, quietly. "I'm not defending him; but I suppose it's Father Brown's business to pray for all men, even for a man like———"
"Yes," assented Father Brown, "it's my business to pray for all men, even for a man like Warren Wynd." ”

“ The truth is, I have some little experience in affairs like this."
"There are no affairs like this," said Aylmer.
"You mean," observed Father Brown, "that the tragedies in your unfortunate family were not normal deaths?"
"I mean they were not even normal murders," answered the other. "The man who is hounding us all to death is a hell-hound, and his power is from hell."
"All evil has one origin," said the priest gravely. "But how do you know they were not normal murders?" ”

“ Vandam, that you're an atheist and only believe what you see. Well, what was it you did see? Or rather, what was it you didn't see?"
"I know," said Vandam and nodded in a gloomy fashion.
"Oh, it's partly all this moon and trees that get on one's nerves," said Fenner obstinately. "Trees always look queer by moonlight, with their branches crawling about. Look at that———"
"Yes," said Father Brown, standing still and peering at the moon through a tangle of trees. "That's a very queer branch up there." ”

“ An inhuman howl in a human voice came from beyond the closed doors; almost simultaneously with the noise of firing. Before the echoes of the shot had died away the door was violently flung open and his host staggered into the room, the dressing-gown half torn from his shoulder and the long pistol smoking in his hand. He seemed to be shaking in every limb, yet he was shaken in part with an unnatural laughter.
"Glory be to the White Magic!" he cried, "Glory be to the silver bullet! The hell-hound has hunted once too often, and my brothers are avenged at last." ”

“ The five men, including the doctor, were sitting round a table; and Payne was idly reflecting that his own light tweeds and red hair must be the only colours in the room, for the priest and the steward were in black, and Wood and Darnaway habitually wore dark grey suits that looked almost like black. Perhaps this incongruity had been what the young man had meant by calling him a human being. At that moment the young man himself turned abruptly in his chair and began to talk. A moment after the dazed artist knew that he was talking about the most tremendous thing in the world. ”

“ The apartments of Moon Crescent itself were at that end remodelled on the monotonous pattern of an American hotel, and rose to a height, which, though lower than the colossal warehouse, would have been called a skyscraper in London. But the colonnade that ran round the whole frontage upon the street had a grey and weather - stained stateliness suggesting that the ghosts of the Fathers of the Republic might still be walking to and fro in it. ”