The Innocence of Father Brown

It is many years now since this co­los­sus of crime sud­denly ceased keep­ing the world in a tur­moil; and when he ceased, as they said after the death of Ro­land, there was a great quiet upon the earth.

“Are you a devil?”

“I am a man,” answered Father Brown gravely; “and there­fore have all dev­ils in my heart.

Heights were made to be looked at, not to be looked from.

Aris­to­crats live not in tra­di­tions but in fash­ions.

They are let­ters and sym­bols in a lan­guage I don’t know; but I know they stand for evil words,

people never an­swer what you say? They an­swer what you mean—or what they think you mean.

Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil. That road goes down and down.

I am so pub­lic that I can af­ford to be private.

his pres­ence was as big as his ab­sence.

There was noth­ing not­able about him, ex­cept a slight con­trast between the hol­i­day gaiety of his clothes and the of­fi­cial grav­ity of his face.