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

But pure wit is akin to Puritanism; to the perfect and painful consciousness of the final fact in the universe. Very briefly, the man who sees the consistency in things is a wit - and a Calvinist. The man who sees the inconsistency in things is a humorist - and a Catholic.

...the primary paradox that man is superior to all the things around him and yet is at their mercy.

A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true.

That young man with the long, auburn hair and the impudent face - that young man was not really a poet; but surely he was a poem.

If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.

It is the root of all religion that a man knows that he is nothing in order to thank God that he is something.

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

Humour is meant, in a literal sense, to make game of man; that is, to dethrone him from his official dignity and hunt him like game.