Hilaire Belloc Quotes

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.

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.

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

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

We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.

The Church is a perpetually defeated thing that always outlives her conquerers.

These are the advantages of travel, that one meets so many men whom one would otherwise never meet, and that one feeds as it were upon the complexity of mankind

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Here richly, with ridiculous display, The Politician's corpse was laid away. While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.

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

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.'

In soft deluding lies let fools delight. A shadow marks our days, which end in Night.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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 world is full of double beds And most delightful maidenheads, Which being so, there's no excuse For sodomy or self-abuse.

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

The grace of God is courtesy.

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.

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

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.

The sea drives truth into a man like salt.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

The whole art of the political speech is to put 'nothing' into it. It is much more difficult than it sounds.

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.

Child! do not throw this book about Refrain from the unholy pleasure Of cutting all the pictures out! Preserve it as your chiefest treasure.

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

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