Father Brown Quotes

I'm afraid I'm a practical man,' said the doctor with gruff humour, 'and I don't bother much about religion and philosophy.'
'You'll never be a practical man till you do,' said Father Brown. 'Look here, doctor; you know me pretty well; I think you know I'm not a bigot. You know I know there are all sorts in all religions; good men in bad ones and bad men in good ones. ~ G.K. Chesterton

There is a limit to human charity," said Lady Outram, trembling all over.

"There is," said Father Brown dryly, "and that is the real difference between human charity and Christian charity. You must forgive me if I was not altogether crushed by your contempt for my uncharitableness today; or by the lectures you read me about pardon for every sinner. For it seems to me that you only pardon the sins that you don't really think sinful. You only forgive criminals when they commit what you don't regard as crimes, but rather as conventions. So you tolerate a conventional duel, just as you tolerate a conventional divorce. You forgive because there isn't anything to be forgiven. ~ G.K. Chesterton

He had the notion that because I am a clergyman I should believe anything. Many people have little notions of that kind.
- Father Brown ~ G.K. Chesterton

Sleep!" cried Father Brown. "Sleep. We have come to the end of the ways. Do you know what sleep is? Do you know that every man who sleeps believes in God? It is a sacrament; for it is an act of faith and it is a food. And we need a sacrament, if only a natural one. Something has fallen on us that falls very seldom on men; perhaps the worst thing that can fall on them. ~ G.K. Chesterton

I suppose I do deserve it; for not noticing the nearest helpers I have. But you must admit the accumulation of incidents was rather formidable. Did you never feel just a momentary awe of the awful volume?' 'Oh, that,' said Father Brown. 'I opened it as soon as I saw it lying there. It's all blank pages. You see, I am not superstitious.' The ~ G.K. Chesterton

But I thought you believed in miracles,' broke out the secretary. 'Yes,' answered Father Brown, 'I believe in miracles. I believe in man-eating tigers, but I don't see them running about everywhere. If I want any miracles, I know where to get them.' 'I ~ G.K. Chesterton

Father Brown: I never said it was always wrong to enter fairyland, I only said it was always dangerous. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Father Brown looked him full in his frowning face. "Yes," he said, "I caught him, with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world, and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Do you remember what Douglas said when Marmion, his guest, offered to shake hands with him?" "Yes," said Father Brown. "'My castles are my king's alone, from turret to foundation stone,'" said Musgrave. "'The hand of Douglas is his own.'" He ~ G.K. Chesterton

I don't think you do,' said Father Brown, with simplicity. 'You say this thing was done by spiritual powers. What spiritual powers? You don't think the holy angels took him and hung him on a garden tree, do you? And as for the unholy angels - no, no, no. The men who did this did a wicked thing, but they went no further than their own wickedness; they weren't wicked enough to be dealing with spiritual powers. I know something about Satanism, for my sins; I've been forced to know. I know what it is, what it practically always is. It's proud and it's sly. It likes to be superior; it loves to horrify the innocent with things half understood, to make children's flesh creep. That's why it's so fond of mysteries and initiations and secret societies and all the rest of it. Its eyes are turned inwards, and however grand and grave it may look, it's always hiding a small, mad smile. ~ G.K. Chesterton

You are my only friend in the world, and I want to talk to you. Or, perhaps, be silent with you. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Father Brown got to his feet, putting his hands behind him. 'Odd, isn't it,' he said, 'that a thief and a vagabond should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and frivolous, and without fruit for God or man? ~ G.K. Chesterton

A WILD, MAD, HILARIOUS AND PROFOUNDLY MOVING TALE IT IS VERY DIFFICULT to classify The Man Who Was Thursday. It is possible to say that it is a gripping adventure story of murderous criminals and brilliant policemen; but it was to be expected that the author of the Father Brown stories should tell a detective story like no-one else. On this level, therefore, The Man Who Was Thursday succeeds superbly; if nothing else, it is a magnificent tour-de-force of suspense-writing. However, ~ G.K. Chesterton

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

You have no business to be an unbeliever. You ought to stand for all the things these stupid people call superstitions. Come now, don't you think there's a lot in those old wives' tales about luck and charms and so on, silver bullets included? 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. ~ G.K. Chesterton

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 with scientific calm. "He is an anachronism, an atavism, a brutal survivor of the Stone Age. If there was one barbarous superstition we all supposed to be utterly extinct and dead in these days, it was that notion about honour and independence. ~ G.K. Chesterton

You see," said Father Brown in low but easy tone, "Scotch people before Scotland existed were a curious lot. In fact, they're a curious lot still. But in the prehistoric times I fancy they really worshipped demons. That," he added genially, "is why they jumped at the Puritan theology. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Father Brown: ... one can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place ~ 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

It's what I call common sense, properly understood,' replied Father Brown. 'It really is more natural to believe a preternatural story, that deals with things we don't understand, than a natural story that contradicts things we do understand. Tell me that the great Mr Gladstone, in his last hours, was haunted by the ghost of Parnell, and I will be agnostic about it. But tell me that Mr Gladstone, when first presented to Queen Victoria, wore his hat in her drawing-room and slapped her on the back and offered her a cigar, and I am not agnostic at all. That is not impossible; it's only incredible. But I'm much more certain it didn't happen than that Parnell's ghost didn't appear; because it violates the laws of the world I do understand. So it is with that tale of the curse. It isn't the legend that I disbelieve - it's the history. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Ray Bradbury published his first story 29 years before I was born. He established himself as an international writer long before I arrived. When my mom was nine months pregnant with me, my father read Bradbury aloud to her as I listened intently, in utero. And I later became his biographer. ~ Sam Weller

I used to sing with my father's jazz band and then when I was ten years old a musician friend of his suggested that I try out for the first west coast production of Annie. ~ Molly Ringwald

Every week or so, a gay kid somewhere jumps off a bridge or slashes his wrists. I am told that a boy near here hanged himself because his father could not accept who he was. On television, I listen to the things they say, the right-wingers, and fundamentalists, and all the people who consolidate their power by hurting other people. I want to cover up the ears of kids and say, "Do not take it in." I took it in. I really did. I heard everything that people in the world around me said about who I was. It hurt me, but I thought I had no right to say anything because I was wrong. I didn't know what silence would cost, how it would change my life. It takes a long time to outrun the things that the world drills into you. Our ~ George Hodgman

Life wasn't about freeing up human souls. It was about creating obedient slaves in the hierarchical construction of the society - with God at the top, then the king and then the father. ~ Ingmar Bergman

Lilith Bresson, innocent of everything except having a bastard for a father, took her new fate with a calm that was terrifying. ~ Tabitha McGowan

There was prom and finals and graduation. There were summer parties. Movies. Mini golf and dates and college orientations. There as life, moving on, and I missed it. Not because I couldn't go physically, but because I couldn't go emotionally. There were whole days when I couldn't leave my bed, not because of the bruises and scars, but because getting up and facing the world for another day felt too frightening, and too pointless. ~ Jennifer Brown

We did not have a television while I was growing up, and so I read voraciously. My earliest memory of being utterly transfixed by a book was Madeleine L'Engle's 'A Wrinkle in Time.' ~ Dan Brown

Did my father talk to me? It's true, he didn't say a lot to me, but I knew what had to be done. No need for big speeches. He taught me the fundamentals of our religion: My son, Islam is simple: you are alone responsible for yourself before God, so if you are good, you will find goodness in the afterlife, and if you are bad, you'll find that instead. There's no mystery: everything depends on how you treat people, especially the weak, the poor, so Islam, that means you pray, you address the Creator and don't do evil around you, don't lie, don't steal, don't betray your wife or your country, don't kill- but do I really need to remind you of this? ~ Tahar Ben Jelloun

By way of fairy tales, this primeval battle of "good vs. evil" is ingrained into us as children through our stories: Merlin vs. Morgan le Fay, Saint George vs. the Dragon, David vs. Goliath, Snow White vs. the Witch, and even Luke Skywalker battling Darth Vader. ~ Dan Brown

If Death is your father, you don't ever have to worry about what part of his body the disease will strike next. If Death is your lover, you don't have to be afraid that he will ever leave you. ~ Francesca Lia Block

I have a healthy respect for gravity. The ground is always there, trying to pull you down. It's the most important thing to keep in mind. ~ Sandra Brown

The only guy that speaks at any sort of depth is, in my mind, Eminem. He's a guy that does music that talks about the struggles of addiction and before that violence, with growing up in a broken family, not being a good enough father. So, you know that's what I enjoy about it. It's harder to listen to than ever before because I have a bunch of kids and you just can't put it on. ~ Marco Rubio

Fuck if I know but I know for damn sure I'm not leaving her alone with your father, I'll probably come back to find my kids on Ebay or some shit. ~ Jordan Silver

I will begin first to search out this right by that magna charta, that great and faithful charter which was made to Abraham, the father of the faithful, in the name of all his seed. ~ Thomas Goodwin

Despite the voice in his head that says he doesn't want anything that's owed to his father, Tom can't wait to get his hands on it.
Just take it. Hit your old man over the head with it. You're dying to. ~ Melina Marchetta

My father hates organized religion, probably because he hates the God who killed his little girl back in 1968. I find religions variously bemusing. ~ William T. Vollmann

O my brothers, your nobility should not look backward but ahead! Exiles shall you be from all father- and forefather-lands! Your children's land shall you love: this love shall be your new nobility - the undiscovered land in the most distant sea. For that I bid your sails search and search. In your children you shall make up for being the children of your fathers: thus shall you redeem all that is past. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Shame: We all have it. It's that gremlin that says 'I'm not enough.' Or, if you're feeling pretty confident, ... 'ooh, who do you think you are?' Shame always has a seat. ~ Brene Brown

Yes, it is very likely that I shall be killed tomorrow,' he thought. And suddenly at this thought of death a whole series of most distant, most intimate, memories rose in his imagination: he remembered his last parting from his father and his wife; he remembered the days when he first loved her. He thought of her pregnancy and felt sorry for her and for himself, and in a nervously emotional and softened mood he went out of the hut in which he was billeted with Nesvitsky and began to walk up and down before it. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Most fathers don't threaten to disembowel their daughter's boyfriends."
"That's not true. And anyway, that's not what I actually said. It was much worse. ~ Richelle Mead

My father, Dines Pontoppidan, belonged to an old family of clergymen and was himself a minister. ~ Henrik Pontoppidan

So, despite the fact that my survival instinct was hollering like a drunk town crier, I started to accept that if I wanted to find out more about my father, I would have to go out and hobnob with the zombies. ~ Lia Habel

The United Nations' greatest fear is that average Americans will no longer tolerate these international scandals and demand that America withdraw from the international organization. ~ Ginny Brown-Waite

What am I supposed to do with this memory now? I know that the wise answer is that I should let it be, but there's so much shame in having a bright, hopeful start and a heavy, lead-footed, choked-up end. I want to put this moment forth like a picture that you slide across the table and you say, "This was this. I was here." When your life breaks apart it's hard to know if you are allowed to keep little pieces that are still nice-looking, or if you have to crush them up in order to move on. Do I have to ruin everything that survived the blast in order to accept that the blast occurred? That seems like a bit too much. Do we have to live with shards, carry them around, have new little cuts all the time? Or can these moments be rounded and just left floating in the attic of a nice old beach house, the one I don't live in yet, the one where I will live when I am old, the oldest person on the planet, the softest crone. When I asked my father this question, "What am I supposed to do with this moment now?" he told me to be unashamed while mentioning it, and to consider the idea that some people stay with you in a group, while others drift away. But the reliving of that moment causes me sharp pain, and I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about it and my guess is that I'm not, because of the damage I will do or reveal within myself. ~ Jenny Slate

I grow old, I grow old, the center will not fold. In youth I had hardening of the categories and looked for the father and the mother in every lover. Then I cracked. Then I fragmented. Then the old man in my soul found the god in herself, not in some Jungian fairy tale but in the flesh that fell from the bones and the words that came into my mouth when the look went out of their eyes. ~ Jennifer Stone

As Kelly Rae so beautifully demonstrated, boundaries are simply our lists of what's okay and what's not okay. In fact, this is the working definition I use for boundaries today. It's so straightforward and it makes sense for all ages in all situations. When we combine the courage to make clear what works for us and what doesn't with the compassion to assume people are doing their best, our lives change. Yes, there will be people who violate our boundaries, and this will require that we continue to hold those people accountable. But when we're living in our integrity, we're strengthened by the self-respect that comes from the honoring of our boundaries, rather than being flattened by disappointment and resentment. ~ Brene Brown

When I was in my early 20s, I studied tae kwon do and hapkido. I earned brown belts in both of them. ~ Karen Bass

There is only silence. A hollow silence for victors and losers all.
I am empty.
What do I do now? There was always a fear, always a concern, always a reason to hoard weapons and food, always a quest or trial. Now, nothing. Just the wind sweeping in over our battlefield. An empty battlefield filled only with echoes of things lost and learned. Friends. Lessons. Soon it will be a memory. I feel like a lover has died. I yearn to cry. Feel hollow. Adrift. I look for Mustang. Will she still care for me? ~ Pierce Brown

The coarsest father gains a new impulse to labor from the moment of his baby's birth; he scarcely sees it when awake, and yet it is with him all the time. Every stroke he strikes is for his child. New social aims, new moral motives, come vaguely up to him. ~ Thomas Wentworth Higginson

During a visit to California, when a friend of my grandmother's told my parents that I must be deaf because I was not responding to sounds, my father was absolutely convinced that I was simply being stubborn. ~ Marlee Matlin

My mother and I were like two continents moving slowly but inexorably apart; my father, the bridge builder, constantly extending the fragile edifice he had constructed to connect us. ~ Diane Setterfield

God will not take shelter behind a jugglery of logic or metaphysics. He is neither a schoolman nor theologian, but our Father in Heaven. ~ George MacDonald

That's how this world works. To get a lot, you have to at least give a little. You have to make a concentrated effort to let it be known that you'll do whatever it takes to get ahead."
Pause.
My father takes a drink from his beer while I stare at him.
Smirking, continuing, he says, "Once you accept this fact of life, you'll be able to do whatever you want to do and have anything you want to have. ~ Jason Myers

Did you know Grandfather would give the poems to me?" I ask.
"We thought he might," my mother says.
"Why didn't you stop him?"
"We didn't want to take away your choices," my mother says.
"But Grandfather never did tell me about the Rising," I say.
"I think he wanted you to find your own way," my mother says. She smiles. "In that way, he was a true rebel. I think that's why he chose that argument with your father as his favorite memory. Though he was upset when the fight happened, later he came to see that your father was strong in choosing his own path, and he admired him for it. ~ Ally Condie

He wipes tears off my face and then snot. He uses his hands. He loves me that much. ~ Nina LaCour

Gospel of Thomas. Coptic 3) Jesus said, "If those who lead you say, 'Look, the Realm is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Realm is inside of you and outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the children of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you live in poverty and it is you yourselves ~ Didymos Judas Thomas

But Danny could not seem to see exactly what the something was. His father was guarding that carefully, even in his own mind. Was it possible, Danny wondered, to be glad you had done something and still be so ashamed of that something that you tried not to think of it? The question was a disturbing one. He didn't think such a thing was possible... in a normal mind. ~ Stephen King

My Hellboy is modeled on my father in some ways: a guy who's been in the Korean War, and he's traveled, and he's done a lot of stuff, and he's kind of got a been there, done that attitude. He's also been in the world. Del Toro's change was to have Hellboy bottled up in a room and mooning over the girl he can't have. ~ Mike Mignola

People think if you describe someone with glistening brown skin you're writing about race, as if the whole of the African diaspora is in someone's brown skin. ~ Jamaica Kincaid

Your father may never have produced one of those stuffy tomes we call great literature, but he left the world a substantial collection of delightful adventure stories. ~ David E. Fessenden

Lava and Kusa returned and were dejected to find the ashram empty. They now knew the whole story about their mother.
They charged up to Valmiki, to ask about her.
Valmiki told them what Sita had said.
For the first time, they were angry with their mother.
How nice it would have been had she come to the court once and proved her innocence as their father desired! It would have been so good for them. A thin flame burned in their young hearts.
They were not little boys growing up in an ashram any more. They were Aryan heirs, princes, future kings. Sita, on the other hand, was the daughter of Mother Earth. Would she ever be understood? ~ Volga

Before their final trip, Hunter's father had imparted one last lesson, and death had made it stick: Use them before they use you. ~ Brigid Kemmerer