Animals are very literal; they live in a world of truisms. ~ Father Brown
A dog is a devil of a ritualist. He is particular about the precise routine of a game as a child about the precise repetition of a fairy-tale. ~ Father Brown
It is the vanity of guessing. It is the megalomania of the gambler. The more incongruous the coincidence, the more instantaneous the decision, the more likely he is to snatch the chance. ~ Father Brown
Those who are quick in talking are not always quick in listening. Sometimes even their brilliancy produces a sort of stupidity.
What he termed a “really open mind” is an “empty mind.”
Such a mind might be a “very charming thing,” Chesterton concedes, but it will not remain charming, if only because it will not remain empty. Inevitably, that charming empty mind will be filled — with “silly things.”
Attention to those laws once meant that matters of morality were more important than someone’s manners — or lack thereof. But now? Or in the early 20th century? For Chesterton, the “fading importance” of good morals had given way to the “growing importance” of good manners.
While it’s true that the breaking of the “big laws” has not necessarily led to greater liberty — or even to anarchy — it’s also true that the proliferation of small laws has drastically reduced liberty, while advancing a kind of lawless anarchy (on the part of those who choose to break the “small laws”).
I prefer to open my mind as I open my mouth so that I can shut it again quickly—and on something solid.
Perhaps silliness is better than nothingness, thought Chesterton, because “where there is nothing there is Satan.” Here’s where something called dogma or doctrine comes into play. If the human mind is “not fed with any doctrine at all,” well then, that mind is at the mercy of who knows what.
Dogs hate nervous people. I don't know whether they make a dog nervous too; or whether, being after all a brute, he is a bit of a bully; or whether his canine vanity (which is colossal) is simply offended at not being liked. ~ Father Brown
He who would be a tower must not fear to be a toppling tower. ~ Father Brown
It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense, and can't see things as they are. Anything that anybody talks about, and says there's a good deal in it, extends indefinitely like a vista in a nightmare. And a dog is an omen and a cat is a mystery and a pig is a mascot, and a beetle is a scarab, calling up all the menagerie of polytheism from Egypt and old India; Dog Anubis and the great green-eyed Pasht and all the howling bulls of Bashan; reeling back to the bestial gods of the beginning, escaping into elephants and snakes and crocodiles; and all because you are frightened of four words: "He was made Man." ~ Father Brown
Nobody of sense sneers at cleverness. ~ Father Brown
Animals are very literal; they live in a world of truisms. ~ Father Brown