father-brown

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

It's just because I have picked a little about mystics that I have no use for mystagogues. Real mystics don't hide mysteries, they reveal them. They set a thing up in broad daylight, and when you've seen it it's still a mystery. But the mystagogues hide a thing in darkness and secrecy, and when you find it, it's a platitude.

If you try to talk about a truth that__ merely moral, people always think it__ merely metaphorical. A real live man with two legs once said to me: __ only believe in the Holy Ghost in a spiritual sense._ Naturally, I said: __n what other sense could you believe it?_ And then he thought I meant he needn__ believe in anything except evolution, or ethical fellowship, or some bilge. . . . -- The Secret of Father Brown

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