Surely we cannot take an open question like the supernatural and shut it with a bang, turning the key of the madhouse on all the mystics of history. You cannot take the region of the unknown and calmly say that, though you know nothing about it, you know all the gates are locked. We do not know enough about the unknown to know that it is unknowable.

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

The poor complain that they are governed badly. The rich complain that they are governed at all.

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

Why be something to everybody when you can be everything to somebody?

The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.

This is, first and last, the real value of Christmas; in so far as the mythology remains at all it is a kind of happy mythology. Personally, of course, I believe in Santa Claus; but it is the season of forgiveness, and I will forgive others for not doing so.