Hilaire Belloc Quotes

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

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

We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Remote and ineffectual don.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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 doubtfuls.

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

Child! Do not throw this book about;Refrain from the unholy pleasureOf cutting all the pictures out!Preserve it as your chiefest treasure.

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 3The library was most inviting:The books upon the crowded shelvesWere mainly of our private writing:We kept a school and taught ourselves. stanza 15From 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 22You do retain the song we set,And how it rises, trips and scans?You keep the sacred memory yet,Republicans? Republicans?stanza 36

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.

The grace of God is courtesy.

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.

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

I shoot the HippopotamusWith bullets made of platinum,Because if I use leaden onesHis hide is sure to flatten 'em.

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

When one remembers how the Catholic Church has been governed, and by whom, one realizes that it must have been divinely inspired to have survived at all.

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.

Matilda told such dreadful lies,It made one gasp and stretch one's eyes;

Her aunt, who from her earliest youth,Had kept a strict regard for truth,Attempted to believe Matilda:The effort very nearly killed her.

I always like to associate with a lot of priests because it makes me understand anti-clerical things so well.

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

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

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.

To walk because it is good for you warps the sould, just as it warps the soul for a man to talk for hire or because he think it his duty.

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.

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.

The Rich arrived in pairsAnd also in Rolls Royces;

They talked of their affairsIn loud and strident voices...The Poor arrived in Fords,Whose features they resembled;They laughed to see so many LordsAnd Ladies all assembled.The People in BetweenLooked underdone and harassed,And our of place and mean,And Horribly embarrassed.