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“My friend," said Flambeau, with a grim humour, "you must be careful with me and remember I was once a criminal. The great advantage of that estate was that I always made up the story myself, and acted it as quick as I chose. This detective business of waiting about is too much for my French impatience. All my life, for good or evil, I have done things at the instant;…”

“Father," said Flambeau in that infantile and heavy voice he used very seldom, "what are we to do?"

His friend's reply came with the pent promptitude of a gun going off.

"Sleep!" cried Father Brown. "Sleep. We have come to the end of the ways. Do you know what sleep is? Do you know that every man who sleeps believes in God? It is a sacrament; for it is an act of faith and it is a food….”

“You see," said Father Brown in low but easy tone, "Scotch people before Scotland existed were a curious lot. In fact, they're a curious lot still. But in the prehistoric times I fancy they really worshipped demons. That," he added genially, "is why they jumped at the Puritan theology."

"My friend," said Flambeau, turning in a kind of fury, "what does all that snuff mean?”

“You seem to have a sort of geological museum here," he said, as he sat down, jerking his head briefly in the direction of the brown dust and the crystalline fragments.

"Not a geological museum," replied Flambeau; "say a psychological museum."

"Oh, for the Lord's sake," cried the police detective laughing, "don't let's begin with such long words.”

Aristide Valentin was unfathomably French; and the French intelligence is intelligence specially and solely. He was not "a thinking machine"; for that is a brainless phrase of modern fatalism and materialism. A machine only is a machine because it cannot think. But he was a thinking man, and a plain man at the same time.

The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen. A few clouds in heaven do come together into the staring shape of one human eye. A tree does stand up in the landscape of a doubtful journey in the exact and elaborate shape of a note of interrogation.

“ "As the tree falleth, so shall it lie," he said.
“Men have called that a gloomy text. It is the essence of all exultation. I am doing now what I have done all my life, what is the only happiness, what is the only universality. I am clinging to something. Let it fall, and there let it lie…”

“Lord! what a strange world in which a man cannot remain unique even by taking the trouble to go mad!”

😁

“But—but—" he said; and then by a last and splendid effort of his great sanity, looked the facts in the face.

"We must surrender," he said. "You could do nothing against fifty thousand tons of water coming down a steep hill, ten minutes hence. We must surrender. Our four thousand men might as well be four. Vicisti Galilæe! Perkins, you may as well get me another glass of wine.”

“Auberon," said Barker, kindly, forgetting all royal titles in a rare moment of sincerity, "I do feel what you mean. I have had moments when these hobbies have hit me. I have had moments when I have sympathised with your humours. I have had moments, though you may not easily believe it, when I have sympathised with the madness of Adam Wayne. But the world, Auberon, the real world, is not run on these hobbies...”

“Do you know, Mr. Buck," said the King, staring gloomily at the table, "the admirable clearness of your reason produces in my mind a sentiment which I trust I shall not offend you by describing as an aspiration to punch your head. You irritate me sublimely. What can it be in me? Is it the relic of a moral sense?”

“Meanwhile Adam Wayne stood outside the glowing chemist's shop, unmistakably wavering.

“What a weakness it is!" he muttered. "I have never got rid of it from childhood—the fear of this magic shop. The grocer is rich, he is romantic, he is poetical in the truest sense, but he is not—no, he is not supernatural. But the chemist! All the other shops stand in Notting Hill, but this stands in Elf-land.”

“I came here on business.”

"Right," said the King, nodding a great number of times with quite unmeaning solemnity; "right, right, right. Business, as the sad glad old Persian said, is business. Be punctual. Rise early. Point the pen to the shoulder. Point the pen to the shoulder, for you know not whence you come nor why. Point the pen to the shoulder, for you know not when you go nor where.”

Be careful how you suggest things to me. For there is in me a madness which goes beyond martyrdom, the madness of an utterly idle man.

...I am a man whose soul has been emptied of all pleasures but folly...

The true humour is mysterious [...] Humour, my friends, is the one sanctity remaining to mankind. It is the one thing you are thoroughly afraid of....

Is he really off his chump, do you think? asked Lambert.

The old President looked after him with queerly vigilant eyes.
He is a man, I think, he said, who cares for nothing but a joke. He is a dangerous man.

Lambert laughed in the act of lifting some macaroni to his mouth.
Dangerous! he said. You don't know little Quin, sir!

The old idealistic republicans used to found democracy on the idea that all men were equally intelligent. Believe me, the sane and enduring democracy is founded on the fact that all men are equally idiotic.

One of these evenings Marcovaldo was taking his family out for a walk. Since they had no money, their entertainment was to watch others go shopping; for the more money circulates, the more those without any can hope: sooner or later a bit of it will come into my pockets. But, on the contrary, Marcovaldo's wages, because they were scant and the family was large, and there were instalments and debts to be paid...

Din dragoste față de noi înșine ne străduim să ne facem ca nu vedem adevărul asta evident, mi-a spus Pines când eram copil, noi îndulcim faptul asta cu povești religioase despre mântuire, existența altor lumi, paradisuri de superstiție…

Bunicul a murit atunci când a încetat să mai aibă visuri, am spus eu. Așa mor ei toți, nu?

Vârsta înaintată a noului lui prieten (de o sută patru ani) a făcut mare impresie asupra lui Lieberson.

- Iaurt ? a întrebat admirativ.

- Coniac și ciocolată, a spus bulgarul, si s-a prezentat cu numele de Albert.

Dar războiul cu vârsta e un război foarte personal, a oftat Pines, nu e o problemă a Mișcării. Când mi-o veni sorocul nu cer decât să stau în fața morții cu mintea limpede.

Oare vei ști vreodată, mi-a spus el, ce gânduri minunate răsar în inima mea? Plutesc sub tâmplele mele ca fluturii de noapte.

…și din când în când bunicul il lua la o plimbare [Seitzer] domoală, numai ei doi, să miroasă flori și să cugete.

Numai de răbdare e nevoie […] omul și insecta sunt două extreme care se confruntă cu lumea pe două căi diferite. Omul, slab și vulnerabil, se bizuie pe ce-a învățat și pe ce-a născocit, pe când insecta, prolifică și puternică, nu învăța nimic - tot ce e în ea s-a născut o dată cu ea.

Legătura dintre râs și dragoste nu-i era străină. Știa că râsul înfierbântă, excita și topește carnea femeii, și imediat a revenit și a lovit in exact același punct, cu o critică ascuțită asupra colectivității celei mari, a celei mici, si asupra principiului egalității în general.

…- Deci crezi că cineva poate păstra atâta vreme în inimă o iubire fără speranță?

- Da, Juliette.

- Si ca viața poate sufla peste ea în fiecare zi fără să o stingă?…

[…]

- Să mergem! a spus ea în cele din urmă; trebuie să ne trezim…

- Știi care este unul dintre lucrurile pe care le iubesc la tine, Bridge?

- Care? am întrebat curioasă, gândindu-mă că urmează să fiu lăudată fiindcă sunt inteligentă sau frumoasă.

- Ca, în tot timpul de când te cunosc, nu m-am plictisit niciodată cu tine.

- A, am zis, întrebându-mă dacă o fi de bine ca nu sunt plicticoasă.

He must have been a gentleman once or associated with gentlemen before he changed his name, and he had a vocabulary of seven words, though I must admit he got along quite well with them. The first four were, ‘I’ll have rum, thanks,’ and then, when he had the rum, he would use the other three—across the champagne, to whatever ruffled bosom or low gown: ‘No bloody moon.’ No bloody moon, Bayard.”