"The Man Who Knew Too Much" by G. K. Chesterton

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• "he was still young enough to remember his politics and not merely try to forget them"
• "Harold March was the sort of man who knows everything about politics, and nothing about politicians. He also knew a great deal about art, letters, philosophy, and general culture; about almost everything, indeed, except the world he was living in."
• ". . . the premonitions proper to a man who meets the strangest friendship of his life"
• "The man was apparently fishing; or at least was fixed in a fisherman's attitude with more than a fisherman's immobility. March was able to examine the man almost as if he had been a statue for some minutes before the statue spoke."
• "It was one of those cases of a strange face so unmistakable as to feel familiar. We feel, somehow, that we ought to recognize it, even though we do not."
• "I know too much," he said. "That's what's the matter with me. That's what's the matter with all of us, and the whole show; we know too much."

• "it looked like a tavern for vinegar instead of wine"
• "March followed without much bodily effort, but with considerable mental disturbance."
• "For it is not neglected and yet it is deserted;"
• "It is regularly swept and garnished for a master who never comes."
• "But he's just the sort of silent, sensible little devil who might be very good at anything; the sort of man you know for years before you find he's a chess champion."
• "Such people seldom reject anything nonsensical, for they are always seeking for something new."
• "Have you ever considered what it must be like to be a man who doesn't exist? I mean to be a man with a fictitious character"
• "This is a dexterous little cosmopolitan guttersnipe who can do scores of things"
• "But don't be too hard on me merely because I know what society is. That's why I moon away my time over things like stinking fish.""
• "It was rather as if the earth had opened and swallowed him into a sort of underworld of dreams."
• "As I feel it, the Cubists are not Cubist enough," replied the stranger. "I mean they're not thick enough. By making things mathematical they make them thin. Take the living lines out of that landscape, simplify it to a right angle, and you flatten it out to a mere diagram on paper. Diagrams have their own beauty; but it is of just the other sort. They stand for the unalterable things; the calm, eternal, mathematical sort of truths"
• "it soon became apparent that Sir Walter's large leonine head was for use as well as ornament, and he considered the matter soberly and sanely enough."

• "He had a talent for appearing when he was not wanted and a talent for disappearing when he was wanted, especially when he was wanted by the police."
• "every detail was picked out by the brilliant day light as if in a microscope"

To be continued . . .