The Man Who Knew Too Much

by G.K. Chesterton

But it's my reading of human nature that a man will cheat in his trade, but not in his hobby.

haven't. I dare say every cigar I smoke and every liqueur I drink comes directly or indirectly from the harrying of the holy places and the persecution of the poor.

I put on the only costume I think fit for a man who has inherited the position of a gentleman, and yet has not entirely lost the feelings of one."

were conscious of a certain solitude in his very sociability. They seemed to be always meeting his relations and never meeting his family. Perhaps it would be truer to say that they saw much of his family and nothing of his home.

with the Minister of Missions and Moral Progress (if that be his correct title) about the pantomime boys of the last four decades.

Sir Henry Harland Fisher, with half the alphabet after his name, was something at the Foreign Office far more tremendous than the Foreign Secretary.

who had many intuitions about the half-formed thoughts of others,

Nobody privileged of late years to meet Sir Henry Harland Fisher would believe that he had ever been called Harry. But, indeed, he had been boyish enough when a boy, and that serenity which shone on him through life, and which now took the form of gravity, had once taken the form of gayety. His friends would have said that he was all the more ripe in his maturity for having been young in his youth.

little as was known of him and much as there was worth knowing.

His vast work was mostly invisible, and very little could be got out of him in private life except a crusty and rather cynical sense of humor.

his actions had something at once ambitious and conscientious; he drank no wine, but was slightly intoxicated with words.

Then the almost equally silent Horne Fisher suddenly spoke, without taking his brooding eyes off the fire. "What I can't understand," he said, "is why nobody is ever slanged for the real reason."

We don't talk to people in Threadneedle Street about nothing but turnips and pigsties. Why do we talk to people in Somerset about nothing but slums and socialism? Why don't we give the squire's land to the squire's tenants, instead of dragging in the county council?"

"Don't you think agricultural laborers would rather have three acres and a cow than three acres of printed forms and a committee?

"I said just now it was the first fact you didn't know, and I should say this is the first joke you didn't see."

"I've told a good many lies in my time, too, and perhaps I've got rather sick of them.

accompanied by a light suitcase and a lively brother.

Harry was still young, and could feel the sort of enthusiasm for his captain in electioneering that a schoolboy can feel for his captain in cricket.

The talent he retained through life for studying his subject, and even somebody else's subject,

excitement. It startled the well informed by being a new and fantastic idea they had never encountered. It startled the ignorant by being an old and familiar idea they never thought to have seen revived. Men saw things in a new light, and knew not even whether it was the sunset or the dawn.

Hang it all! what is a man ashamed of nowadays?"

a grim little local Radical, a champion of the chapel, and one of those happy people whose work is also their hobby.

the square, strutting figure in front and the lean, lounging figure behind him, like his shadow in the sunshine.

He had been pickled in the politics of that countryside from boyhood, he knew everybody's secrets, and electioneering was the romance of his life.

I think I can clear myself of the charge of mere selfish ambition. I only want certain things done. I don't want to do them. I very seldom want to do anything.

It's evidently very important to have a belt. But apparently you have to be rather high up in society to have one. Possibly," he added, thoughtfully—"possibly the explanation of the phrase 'a belted earl,' the meaning of which has always escaped me."

A glitter of sunlight made the early winter more like a late autumn, and the dark woods were touched here and there with red and golden leaves, like the last rays of a lost sunset.

There was something fascinating about that unexpected gate, like the opening of a fairy tale.

had in him something of the aristocrat, which is very near to the anarchist. It was characteristic of him that he turned into this dark and irregular entry as casually as into his own front door, merely thinking that it would be a short cut to the house.

The sheet of water which he had seen shimmering through the trees was of considerable extent, but was walled in on every side with woods which were not only dark, but decidedly dismal.

They were men of the age of Reason; they, who filled their gardens with these stone nymphs, had less hope than any men in all history of really meeting a nymph in the forest."

"I thought at first you were a murderer. But it seems unlikely, somehow, that the partridge rushed between us and died for love of me, like the heroines in the romances;

voice was something of a surprise coming from such a scarecrow; it had that hard fastidiousness to be found in those who have made a fight for their own refinement among rough surroundings.

He might as well own the wind, or think he could write his name on a morning cloud.

Besides, if we want poor people to respect property we must give them some property to respect.

he seemed at once to blanch and flame at the promise as if it were a threat.

It had the usual appearance of being, not a private house, but a sort of public building sent into exile in the provinces.

think it would be better if we fought in a sporting spirit; in a spirit of English fair play." "Much better," assented Fisher. "It would be much better if you were English and very much better if you had ever played fair.

Sometimes what is happening to me grows vivid in a curious double way, as if it had happened before. Have you ever had that mystical feeling that things have happened before?"

"Blackmailers do not always go to jail. Sometimes they go to Parliament.

There was much that he did not know yet; but he thought he knew where he could find the knowledge.

Something was dangling from the tree that was not a broken branch. For some seconds he stood as still as a stone, and as cold.

Whatever bandits they were that infested this desert island, they were obviously uneasy about their job and very anxious to be quit of it.

He hardly knew why it was so ugly an idea, but it affected his imagination in a dark and disproportionate fashion. There seemed to be something creepy about the idea of being left in a dark room with a deaf mute.

"I suppose it's no use trying to throttle you in order to find out; it would be displeasing to pass the night with a corpse. Besides I might be the corpse.

whatever he is, he's a fool. What hope can there ever be of a free peasantry in England if the peasants themselves are such snobs as to want to be gentlemen?

It is the English who deserve to be cursed, and are cursed, because they allowed such vermin to crawl into the high places of their heroes and their kings.

God himself may hold a candle to show me your infernal face."

Indeed, the details were so unexpected that for a moment they turned the captive's rocking mind from the last personal revelation.

"We all thought you were so clever. How could we know you were going to be—well, really, such a rotten failure?"