Hilaire Belloc Quotations

I'm tired of love; I'm still more tired of rhyme; but money gives me pleasure all the time.

Loss and possession, death and life are one, There falls no shadow where there shines no sun.

I have wandered all my life, and I have also traveled; the difference between the two being this, that we wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.

Every major question in history is a religious question. It has more effect in molding life than nationalism or a common language.

When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.

When friendship disappears then there is a space left open to that awful loneliness of the outside world which is like the cold space between the planets. It is an air in which men perish utterly.

From quiet homes and first beginning, out to the undiscovered ends, there's nothing worth the wear of winning, but laughter and the love of friends.

Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death.

I am writing a book about the Crusades so dull that I can scarcely write it.

The moment a man talks to his fellows he begins to lie.

Be content to remember that those who can make omelettes properly can do nothing else.

An institute run with such knavish imbecility that if it were not the work of God it would not last a fortnight.

Is there no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have let the vulgar stuff alone.

All men have an instinct for conflict: at least, all healthy men.

Any subject can be made interesting, and therefore any subject can be made boring.

Of all fatiguing, futile, empty trades, the worst, I suppose, is writing about writing.

Oh, my friends, be warned by me, That breakfast, dinner, lunch and tea, Are all human frame requires.

It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them.

The microbe is so very small: You cannot take him out at all.

Just as there is nothing between the admirable omelet and the intolerable, so with autobiography.

It is sometimes necessary to lie damnably in the interests of the nation

Child! Do not throw this book about; refrain from the unholy pleasure of cutting all the pictures out.

From quiet homes and first beginning,Out to the undiscovered ends,There's nothing worth the wear of winning,But laughter and the love of friends.

He is largely right in his conclusions, somewhat over-selective in his facts: most of what you will read thereafter you will find happily fits into his analysis, which is as it should be, because, as I said, he is indeed largely right.

When I am dead, I hope it is said, 'His sins were scarlet, but his books were read'.

I said to Heart, 'How goes it?' Heart replied: 'Right as a Ribstone Pippin!'

Physicians of the Utmost Fame Were called at once; but when they came they murmured as they took their fees, "There is no cure for this disease

Physicians of the Utmost Fame Were called at once; but when they came they murmured as they took their fees, "There is no cure for this disease

The accursed power which stands on Privilege (And goes with Women, and Champagne, and Bridge) Broke - and Democracy resumed her reign: (Which goes with Bridge, and Women and Champagne).

Economic freedom is in our eyes a good. It is among the highest of temporal goods because it is necessary to the highest life of society through the dignity of man and through the multiplicity of his action, in which multiplicity is life. Through well-divided property alone can the units of society react upon the State. Through it alone can a public opinion flourish. Only where the bulk of the cells are healthy can the whole organism thrive.

Alas! That such affected tricks/ Should flourish in a child of six!

Oh! let us never, never doubt what nobody is sure about!

The Microbe is so very small/ You cannot make him out at all,/ But many sanguine people hope/ To see him through a microscope.

And mothers of large families (who claim common sense) will find a Tiger well repay the trouble and expense.

It is Mind which determines the change of Society, and it was because the mind at work was a Catholic mind that the slave became a serf and was on his way to becoming a peasant and a fully free man-a man free economically as well as politically. The whole spirit of the Church was for small property, and that spirit was slowly, instinctively, working for the establishment of small property throughout Christendom.

When well-divided property has disappeared and Capitalism has taken its place, you cannot reverse the process without acting against natural economic tendencies.

For no one, in our long decline,So dusty, spiteful and divided,Had quite such pleasant friends as mine,Or loved them half as much as I did. [stanza 3]The library was most inviting:The books upon the crowded shelvesWere mainly of our private writing:We kept a school and taught ourselves. [stanza 15]From quiet homes and first beginning,Out to the undiscovered ends,Theres nothing worth the wear of winning,But laughter and the love of friends. [stanza 22]You do retain the song we set,And how it rises, trips and scans?You keep the sacred memory yet,Republicans? Republicans?[stanza 36]

Be at the pains of putting down every single item of expenditure whatsoever every day which could possibly be twisted into a professional expense and remember to lump in all the doubtfulls.

When people call this beast to mind, They marvel more and more At such a little tail behind, So large a trunk before.

I said to Heart, "How goes it?" Heart replied: "Right as a Ribstone Pippin!" But it lied.

Of courtesy, it is much less Than courage of heart or holiness, Yet in my walks it seems to me That the Grace of God is in courtesy.

The accursed power which stands on privilege( and goes with women, champagne and bridge) Broke - and democracy resumed her reign ( which goes with bridge and women and champagne.

When you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England.

But if I be asked what sign we may look for to show that the advance of the faith is at hand I would answer by a word the modern world has forgotten: Persecution. When that shall once more be at work it will be morning.

[A]lways keep a-hold of Nurse For fear of finding something worse

Physicians of the utmost fame, Were called at once; but when they came They answered, as they took their fees, 'There is no Cure for this Disease.'

It seems to be saying perpetually; 'I am the end of the nineteenth century; I am glad they built me of iron; let me rust.' ... It is like a passing fool in a crowd of the University, a buffoon in the hall; for all the things in Paris has made, it alone has neither wits nor soul.

Oh, you should never, never doubt what nobody is sure about.

The Llama is a woolly sort of fleecy hairy goat, with an indolent expression and an undulating throat; like an unsuccessful literary man.

For no one, in our long decline, So dusty, spiteful and divided, Had quite such pleasant friends as mine, Or loved them half as much as I did.

Whatever happens, we have got The Maxim gun, and they have not.

If we are to be happy, decent and secure of our souls: drink some kind of fermented liquor with one's food; go on the water from time to time; dance on occasions, and sing in a chorus...

For one thing, I was no longer alone; a man is never alone with the wind-and the boat made three.

Never could an increase of comfort or security be a sufficient good to be bought at the price of liberty.

Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight. But roaring Bill, who killed him, thought it right.

Dear Grandmamma, with what we give. We humbly pray that you may live. For many, many happy years: Although you bore us all to tears.

Writing itself is a bad enough trade, rightly held up to ridicule and contempt by the greater part of mankind, and especially by those who do real work, plowing, riding, sailing

The Rich arrived in pairs And also in Rolls Royces; They talked of their affairs In loud and strident voices... The Poor arrived in Fords, Whose features they resembled; They laughed to see so many Lords And Ladies all assembled. The People in Between Looked underdone and harassed, And our of place and mean, And Horribly embarrassed.

Great artistic talent in any direction... is hardly inherent to the man. It comes and goes; it is often possessed only for a short phase in his life; it hardly ever colors his character as a whole and has nothing to do with the moral and intellectual stuff of the mind and soul. Many great artists, perhaps most great artists, have been poor fellows indeed, whom to know was to despise.

There is no one who has cooked but has discovered that each particular dish depends for its rightness upon some little point which he is never told. It is not only so of cooking: it is so of splicing a rope; of painting a surface of wood; of mixing mortar; of almost anything you like to name among the immemorial human arts.

Money gives me pleasure all the time.

The gentleman is generous and treats all men as his equals, especially those whom he feels to be inferior in rank and wealth.

If you can describe clearly without a diagram the proper way of making this or that knot, then you are a master of the English language.

It has unfortunately now become a habit for so many generations, that it has almost passed into an instinct throughout the Jewish body, to rely upon the weapon of secrecy. Secret societies, a language kept as far as possible secret, the use of false names in order to hide secret movements, secret relations between various parts of the Jewish body: all these and other forms of secrecy have become the national method.

Take the particular trick of false names. It seems to us particularly odious. We think when we show our contempt for those who use this subterfuge that we are giving them no more than they deserve. It is a meanness which we associate with criminals and vagabonds; a piece of crawling and sneaking...Men whose race is universally known, will unblushingly adopt a false name as a mask, and after a year or two pretend to treat it as an insult if their original and true name be used in its place.

There is already something like a Jewish monopoly in high finance... here is the same element of Jewish monopoly in the silver trade, and in the control of various other metals, notably lead, nickel, quicksilver. What is most disquieting of all, this tendency to monopoly is spreading like a disease.

If we do not restore the Institution of Property we cannot escape restoring the Institution of Slavery; there is no third course.

[Heresy is] the dislocation of a complete and self-supporting scheme by the introduction of a novel denial of some essential part therein.

You are my cat, and I am your human.

It has long been recognized by public men of all kinds. . . that statistics come under the head of lying, and that no lie is so false or inconclusive as that which is based on statistics.

The Devil, having nothing else to do Went off to tempt my Lady Poltagrue. My Lady, tempted by a private whim, To his extreme annoyance, tempted him.

How slow the shadow creeps: but when 'tis past How fast the shadows fall. How fast! How fast!

I am a sundial, and I make a botch Of what is done much better by a watch.

I am a Catholic. As far as possible I go to Mass every day. This is a rosary. As far as possible, I kneel down and tell these beads every day. If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God that He has spared me the indignity of being your representative!

Such are the mass of the supporters of either party. They derive their political opinions originally from some family tradition or some fanciful preference, but they back them with all the passion of sportsmen. In a vague subconscious way they know it is a game, but they happen to enjoy playing the game.

And the men that were boys when I was a boy Shall sit and drink with me.

Before the curse of statistics fell upon mankind we lived a happy, innocent life, full of merriment and go and informed by fairly good judgment.

I shoot the Hippopotamus with bullets made of platinum, because if I use the leaden one his hide is sure to flatten em.

Put you hand before your eyes and remember, you that have walked, the places from which you have walked away, and the wilderness into which you manfully turned the steps of your abandonment ... It is your business to leave all that you have know altogether behind you, and no man has eyes at the back of his head - go forward.

The choice lies between property on the one hand and slavery, public or private, on the other. There is no third issue.

When the mass of families in a State are without property, then those who were once citizens become virtually slaves. The more the State steps in to enforce conditions of security and sufficiency; the more it regulates wages, provides compulsory insurance, doctoring, education, and in general takes over the lives of the wage-earners, for the benefit of the companies and men employing the wage-earners, the more is this condition of semi-slavery accentuated.

Ownership by delegation is a contradiction in terms. When men say, for instance (by a false metaphor), that each member of the public should feel himself an owner of public property-such as a Town Park-and should therefore respect it as his own, they are saying something which all our experience proves to be completely false. No man feels of public property that it is his own; no man will treat it with the care of the affection of a thing which is his own.

The term "Socialism" becomes a common label for the various theories of attack upon the principle of property, the various policies of communal control at the expense of the family and individual freedom.

The worship of the nation has been able to make men tolerate under its authority what they could never have tolerated from princes: a submission to rule, which, through sumptuary laws on food and drink, through conscription, through a cast-iron system of compulsory instruction for all on State ordered lines, and through a State examination at the gate of every profession, has almost killed the citizen's power to react upon that which controls him, and has almost destroyed that variety which is the mark of life.

The society of Christendom and especially of Western Christendom up to the explosion, which we call the Reformation, had been a society of owners: a Proprietarial Society. It was one in which there remained strong bonds between one class and another, and in which there was a hierarchy of superior and inferior, but not, in the main, a distinction between a restricted body of possessors and a main body of destitute at the mercy of the possessors, such as our society has become.

The very large units of production and exchange have access to credit on a large scale, sometimes without any cover at all, merely upon the prospect of their success, and always upon terms far easier than are open to their smaller rivals. It is perhaps on this line of easier credit that large capital today does most harm to small capital, drives it out and ruins it.

The restoration of property would be a complicated, arduous and presumably a lengthy business; the transformation of a Capitalist Society into a Communist one needs nothing but the extension of existing conditions.

The Reformation has been called in a biting epigram "a rising of the rich against the poor."

The old freedom sufficiently survives in the mind of the wage earner to give him the illusion that, while accepting insurance and maintenance from the capitalist state, he can still be a full citizen. He thinks he can have his cake and eat it too. He is mistaken. The great capitalists who procured these regulations from the politicians knew what they were at. They were catching their proletariat in a net, and now they hold it fast.

The machine does not control the mind of man, though it affects the mind of man; it is the mind of man that can and should control the machine.

The larger unit can borrow more easily in proportion than the smaller. It can especially tap bank credit more easily and bank credit is, to-day, the chief factor in economic activity of all kinds.

The larger the unit of capital present, the easier the transaction called emission of credit. Centralized lending of this kind (which is today universal) actively promotes the absorption of the small man by the great, the reduction of small property owners to a proletarian condition.

To control the production of wealth is to control human life itself. To refuse man the opportunity for the production of wealth is to refuse him the opportunity for life; and, in general, the way in which the production of wealth is by law permitted is the only way in which the citizens can legally exist.

Under the old social philosophy which had governed the Middle Ages, temporal, and therefore all economic, activities were referred to an eternal standard. The production of wealth, it distribution and exchange were regulated with a view to securing the Christian life of Christian men. In two points especially was this felt: First in securing the independence of the family, which can only be done by the wide distribution of property, in others words the prevention of the growth of a proletariat; secondly, in the close connection between wealth and public function.

Under the old philosophy which had governed the high Middle Ages things had been everywhere towards a condition of Society in which property was well distributed throughout the community, and thus the family rendered independent.

There are few greater temptations on earth than to stay permanently at Oxford in meditation, and to read all the books in the Bodlean.

Of old when folk lay sick and sorely tried The doctors gave them physic, and they died. But here's a happier age: for now we know Both how to make men sick and keep them so.

If antiquity be the only test of nobility, then cheese is a very noble thing ... The lineage of cheese is demonstrably beyond all record.

I forget the name of the place; I forget the name of the girl; but the wine was Chambertin.

Time after time mankind is driven against the rocks of the horrid reality of a fallen creation. And time after time mankind must learn the hard lessons of history-the lessons that for some dangerous and awful reason we can't seem to keep in our collective memory.