The Complete Father Brown

The Complete Father Brown

by G.K. Chesterton

Forty-nine quietly sensational cases investigated by the high-priest of detective fiction
FATHER BROWNForty-nine quietly sensational cases investigated by the high-priest of detective fiction
FATHER BROWN

Immortalized in these famous stories, G.K. Chesterton's endearing amateur sleuth has entertained countless generations of readers. For, as his admirers know, Father Brown's cherubic face and unworldly simplicity, his glasses and his huge umbrella, disguise a quite uncanny understanding of the criminal mind at work.

This Penguin omnibus edition contains

* The Innocence of Father Brown
* The Wisdom of Father Brown
* The Incredulity of Father Brown
* The Secret of Father Brown
* The Scandal of Father Brown

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Paperback, 718 pages

Published 1981 by Penguin (first published 1929)

tags: thriller, historical, mystery thriller, historical fiction, european literature, classics, crime, short stories, fiction, literature, detective, british literature, mystery

Book Quotes

“You are my only friend in the world, and I want to talk to you. Or, perhaps, be silent with you.”

― G.K. Chesterton

“No man's really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be; till he's realised exactly how much right he has to all this snobbery, and sneering, and talking about 'criminals,' as if they were apes in a forest ten thousand miles away; till he's got rid of all the dirty self-deception of talking about low types and deficient skulls; till he's squeezed out of his soul the last drop of the oil of the Pharisees; till his only hope is somehow or other to have captured one criminal, and kept him safe and sane under his own hat.”

― G.K. Chesterton

topics: Criminals, Introspection

“The priest looked puzzled also, as if at his own thoughts; he sat with knotted brow and then said abruptly: ‘You see, it’s so easy to be misunderstood. All men matter. You matter. I matter. It’s the hardest thing in theology to believe.”

― G.K. Chesterton

“We matter to God — God only knows why.”

― G.K. Chesterton

“There’s another thing you’ve got to remember. You talk about these highbrows having a higher art and a more philosophical drama. But remember what a lot of the philosophy is! Remember what sort of conduct those highbrows often present to the highest! All about the Will to Power and the Right to Live and the Right to Experience — damned nonsense and more than damned nonsense — nonsense that can damn.” Father”

― G.K. Chesterton

“We have to touch such men, not with a bargepole, but with a benediction,” he said. “We have to say the word that will save them from hell. We alone are left to deliver them from despair when your human charity deserts them. Go on your own primrose path pardoning all your favourite vices and being generous to your fashionable crimes; and leave us in the darkness, vampires of the night, to console those who really need consolation; who do things really indefensible, things that neither the world nor they themselves can defend; and none but a priest will pardon. Leave us with the men who commit the mean and revolting and real crimes; mean as St. Peter when the cock crew, and yet the dawn came.”

― G.K. Chesterton

“People will tell you that theories don’t matter and that logic and philosophy aren’t practical. Don’t you believe them. Reason is from God, and when things are unreasonable there is something the matter.”

― G.K. Chesterton

“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.”

― G.K. Chesterton

topics: Agnostic, Belief, Implausible, Impossibility, Incredible, Supernatural, Understanding

“And that is just the note; that’s the unmistakable style. People who complain are just jolly, human Christian nuisances; I don’t mind them. But people who complain that they never complain are the devil. They are really the devil; isn’t that swagger of stoicism the whole point of the Byronic cult of Satan? I heard all this; but for the life of me I couldn’t hear of anything tangible she had to complain of.”

― G.K. Chesterton

“There was a man who had a fly in his eye when he looked through the telescope, and he discovered that there was a most incredible dragon in the moon.”

― 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

topics: Charity, Crime, Forgiveness

“No,” said the other priest; “reason is always reasonable, even in the last limbo, in the lost borderland of things. I know that people charge the Church with lowering reason, but it is just the other way. Alone on earth, the Church makes reason really supreme. Alone on earth, the Church affirms that God himself is bound by reason.”

― G.K. Chesterton

“it might be questioned whether hammering is more of a strain on the attention because it may go on for ever, or because it may stop at any minute.”

― G.K. Chesterton

“There are two ways of renouncing the devil,” he said; “and the difference is perhaps the deepest chasm in modern religion. One is to have a horror of him because he is so far off; and the other to have it because he is so near. And no virtue and vice are so much divided as those two virtues.”

― G.K. Chesterton

“Go on,” said the priest very gently. “We are only trying to find the truth. What are you afraid of?” “I am afraid of finding it,” said Flambeau.”

― 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

“Father Brown tossed the paper on the floor and sat bolt upright in his chair. ‘You mustn’t let that sort of stuff stupefy you,’ he said sharply. ‘These devils always try to make us helpless by making us hopeless.”

― G.K. Chesterton

“But Maurice was clean-shaven, and, by the portraits shown to me, certainly quite beautiful; though he looked a little more like a tenor than a gentleman ought to look. James”

― G.K. Chesterton

“Dog doesn’t eat dog, and doctors don’t bite doctors, not even when they are mad doctors. I shouldn’t care to cast any reflection on my eminent predecessor in Potter’s Pond, if I could avoid it;”

― 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

G.K. Chesterton

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was one of the most influential English writers of the 20th century. His prolific and diverse output included journalism, philosophy, poetry, biography, Christian apologetics, fantasy and detective fiction.

Chesterton has been called the "prince of paradox". Time magazine, in a review of a biography of Chesterton, observed of his writing style: "Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories—first carefully turning them inside out.
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