Father Brown: Excuse me. Do you speak English?
Painter: Sure.
Father Brown: Have you noticed the river has started flowing backwards?
Painter: If you hadn't told me I never would have noticed.
Father Brown: And that the sun is moving from west to east. And that those trees, instead of growing, are shrinking down into the ground. All of which suggests to me that the course of history has started to unwind, and that we are approaching the end of the world.
Painter: In that case, I'd better be going. Thanks for the tip.

Father Brown: I've never been in a cell before. Except a monastery cell, of course.

Father Brown: It's all so nonsensical, it must make sense.

Father Brown: My son...
Flambeau: Please do not call me your son.
Father Brown: My son, you think that you are a man of the world and that I am not. But I assure you, my "innocent" ears encounter every day stories of a horror that would make your sophisticated hair stand on end. Although I wear funny clothes, and have taken certain vows, I live far more in the world than you do.

Father Brown: Perhaps you think a crime horrible because you cannot imagine yourselves committing it. That isn't true, you know. What really horrifies you is the secret and shameful knowledge that you are capable of committing it. We all are, I no less than you. We were not made good people or bad people. We were made people.

Father Brown: The only visible door leads to nowhere. There must be an invisible door leading somewhere.

Father Brown: Where would a wise man hide a leaf? In a forest. Where would a wise man hide a cross? In a forest of crosses. We have a forest of crosses ready-made for us. A forest of priests; a black forest, you might say.

Auctioneer: Now, who will open the bidding for me at ten thousand pounds?
Texan Millionaire: Fifty thousand dollars.
Auctioneer: I am bid... seventeen thousand, eight hundred and fifty-seven pounds, two shillings and ten pence. I think it would be easier, sir, if we were to conduct the bidding in pounds sterling.

[the contents of Father Brown's pockets are being inventoried by the police]
Patrolman: One Bible.
Father Brown: [Correcting the patrolman] One breviary.
Station sergeant: One... book.
Patrolman: One bar of milk chocolate.
Station sergeant: One bar... of chocolate. Your glasses, please.
Father Brown: Oh. Is that really necessary? I'm as blind as a bat without them. Though I often wonder whether all bats are really blind, any more than all lords drunk or all judges sober.