If you know what a mans doing, get in front of him; but if you want to — Father Brown

"How do you know all this?" he cried. "Are you a devil?" "I am a man," answered Father Brown gravely; "and therefore have all devils in my heart"

"The things that happen here do not seem to mean anything; they mean something somewhere else. Somewhere else retribution will come on the real offender. Here it often seems to fall on the wrong person."

"Human science can never be quite certain of things like that," said Father Brown, still looking at the red budding of the branches over his head, "if only because of the difficulty about definition and connotation. What is a weapon? People have been murdered with the mildest domestic comforts; certainly with tea-kettles, probably with tea-cosies. On the other hand, if you showed an Ancient Briton a revolver, I doubt if he would know it was a weapon—until it was fired into him, of course."

"“Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.”"

"I never said it was always wrong to enter fairyland. I only said it was always dangerous."

"The modern mind always mixes up two different ideas: mystery in the sense of what is marvellous, and mystery in the sense of what is complicated. That is half its difficulty about miracles. A miracle is startling; but it is simple. It is simple because it is a miracle. It is power coming directly from God (or the devil) instead of indirectly through nature or human wills."