72 Hilaire Belloc Quotes

Hilaire Belloc quotes

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

2. What! Would you slap the Porcupine? Unhappy child - desist! Alas! That any friend of mine Should turn Tupto-philist.

3. 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.

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

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

6. I'm tired of Love; I'm still more tired of Rhyme. But money gives me pleasure all the time.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. May all my enemies go to hell, Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel.

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

11. Write as the wind blows and command all words like an army!

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

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

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

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

16. Oh! let us never, never doubt What nobody is sure about!

17. Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight, But Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right.

18. Now the faith is old and the Devil bold Exceedingly bold indeed. And the masses of doubt that are floating about Would smother a mortal creed. But we that sit in a sturdy youth And still can drink strong ale Let us put it away to infallible truth That always shall prevail. And thank the Lord For the temporal sword And howling heretics too. And all good things Our Christendom brings But especially barley brew!

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

20. I shoot the Hippopotamus With bullets made of platinum, Because if I use leaden ones His hide is sure to flatten 'em.

21. Torture will give a dozen pence or more To keep a drab from bawling at his door. The public taste is quite a different thing- Torture is positively paid to sing.

22. It was my shame, and now it is my boast, That I have loved you rather more than most.

23. A lovely river, all alone, She lingers in the hills and holds A hundred little towns of stone, Forgotten in the western wolds.

24. You shall receive me when the clouds are high With evening and the sheep attain the fold. This is the faith that I have held and hold, And this is that in which I mean to die.

25. Of three in One and One in three My narrow mind would doubting be Till Beauty, Grace and Kindness met And all at once were Juliet.

26. How did the party go in Portman Square? I cannot tell you; Juliet was not there. And how did Lady Gaster's party go? Juliet was next me and I do not know.

27. That I grow sour, who only lack delight; That I descend to sneer, who only grieve; That from my depth I should condemn your height, That with my blame my mockery you receive- Huntress and splendor of the woodland night- Diana of this world, do not believe.

28. Kings live in Palaces, and Pigs in sties, And youth in Expectation. Youth is wise.

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

30. To exalt, enthrone, establish and defend, To welcome home mankind's mysterious friend Wine, true begetter of all arts that be; Wine, privilege of the completely free; Wine the recorder; wine the sagely strong; Wine, bright avenger of sly-dealing wrong, Awake, Ausonian Muse, and sing the vineyard song!

31. By thee do seers the inward light discern; By thee the statue lives, the Gods return.

32. When the ephemeral vision's lure is past All, all, must face their Passion at the last.

33. So touch my dying lip: so bridge that deep: So pledge my waking from the gift of sleep, And, sacramental, raise me the Divine: Strong brother in God and last companion, Wine.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

40. 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

48. 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.'

49. 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).

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

51. 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.

52. First, I tell them what I am going to tell them, then I tell them, then I tell them what I told them.

1. It is therefore our business to restore economic freedom through the restoration of the only institution under which it flourishes, which institution is Property. The problem before us is, how to restore Property so that it shall be, as it was not so long ago, a general institution.

2. Communism worked honestly by officials devoid of human frailties and devoted to nothing but the good of its slaves, would have certain manifest material advantages as compared with a proletarian wage-system where millions live in semi-starvation, and many millions more in permanent dread thereof. But even if it were administered thus Communism would only produce its benefits through imposing slavery.

3. I put my pencil upon the paper, doubtfully, and drew little lines, considering my theme. But I would not long hesitate in this manner, for I knew that all creation must be chaos first, and then gestures in the void before it can cast out the completed thing.

4. Had there been any existent vital and energetic institution left in Society after the Reformation for the use of small property in coordinated form-that is, in combination, so that the average man's holding could be put to useful purpose in company with the holdings of a great number of other men of his own sort, the new evils would not have arisen.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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]

9. The smaller man approaching our modern banking system, which controls all issue of credit and therefore pretty well all our industrial and commercial activities, is not what the controllers of that credit call "interesting." He borrows with difficulty and upon high terms, and must pledge security out of all proportion to that which his richer rival has to put down.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. The terror in which English capitalists now stand of organized proletarian resistance gives to the naturally protected craft organizations the power to receive the wages they demand. They act as they have been trained to act by capitalist society, which denies the doctrine of the Just Price, which proclaims work to be an evil and the goal of human endeavor to be the avoidance of it; which puts it up as an ideal that individuals should get as much money as they possibly can out of their fellows by any means in their power.

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

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

15. 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.

16. Protest against Industrial Capitalism from one aspect or another is universal: so was the protest against the condition of European religion at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

17. 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.

18. It is the business of the wealthy man To give employment to the artisan.

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

20. 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.