The Man Who Knew Too Much

"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."

The mysticism that was buried deep under all the cynicism of his experience was awake and moving in the depths.

"He may be mad, but there's method in his madness. There nearly always is method in madness. It's what drives men mad, being methodical."

"They would just swallow the skepticism because it was skepticism. Modern intelligence won't accept anything on authority. But it will accept anything without authority."

"I have been in that room ever since," said Horne Fisher. "I am in it now. I won the election, but I never went to the House. My life has been a life in that little room on that lonely island. Plenty of books and cigars and luxuries, plenty of knowledge and interest and information, but never a voice out of that tomb to reach the world outside. I shall probably die there."

Something lay in the shadow at the foot of the ridge, and the man who knew too much knew what is worth knowing.

—G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Knew Too Much.