Hilaire Belloc Quotes

The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine - but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight.

We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.

Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, There’s always laughter and good red wine. At least I’ve always found it so. Benedicamus Domino!

The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself.

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

That I grow sour, who only lack delight;

That I descend to sneer, who only grieve: That from my depth I should contemn your height; That with my blame my mockery you receive; Huntress and splendour of the woodland night, Diana of this world, do not believe.

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.

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.

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.

Slowly but certainly the proletarian, by every political reform which secures his well-being under new rules of insurance, of State control in education, of State medicine and the rest, is developing into the slave, leaving the rich man apart and free. All industrial civilization is clearly moving towards the re-establishment of the Servile State.

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.

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

Political freedom without economic freedom is almost worthless, and it is because the modern proletariat has the one kind of freedom without the other that its rebellion is now threatening the very structure of the modern world.

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

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

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

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

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.

When the mass of men are dispossessed - own nothing - they become wholly dependent upon the owners; and when those owners are in active competition to lower the cost of production the mass of men whom they exploit not only lack the power to order their own lives, but suffer from want and insecurity as well.

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

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

The propaganda of Communism throughout the world, in organization and direction is in the hands of Jewish agents. As for anyone who does not know that the Bolshevist movement in Russia is Jewish, I can only say that he must be a man who is taken in by the suppression of our deplorable press.

Ownership is not a general feature of our society, determining its character.

On the contrary, dependence on a precarious wage at the will of others is the general feature of our society.

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

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

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.

The power of the State must be invoked for restoring economic freedom just as it has been invoked for destroying economic freedom.

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 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.

In the midst of all these innumerable forms of a common protest and universal ill-ease there has grown up one definite body of doctrine whose adherents are called Communists and who desired the total subversion of what had been, hitherto unquestioned among civilized European men, the general doctrines of property and individual freedom.

The grace of God is courtesy.

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

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

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.

Money gives me pleasure all the time.

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

The sea drives truth into a man like salt.

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.

If antiquity be the only test of nobility, then cheese is a very noble thing .

.. The lineage of cheese is demonstrably beyond all record.

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.

The whole art of the political speech is to put 'nothing' into it.

It is much more difficult than it sounds.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.