Top 100 Hilaire Belloc Quotes
#1. When they married and gave in marriage
They danced at the County Ball
And some of them kept a carriage
And the flood destroyed them all.
Hilaire Belloc
#2. All men have an instinct for conflict: at least, all healthy men.
Hilaire Belloc
#3. The moment a man talks to his fellows he begins to lie.
Hilaire Belloc
#4. When you have lost your inns, you may drown your empty selves. For you have lost the heart of England.
Hilaire Belloc
#6. The choice lies between property on the one hand and slavery, public or private, on the other. There is no third issue.
Hilaire Belloc
#7. I'm tired of love; I'm still more tired of rhyme; but money gives me pleasure all the time.
Hilaire Belloc
#8. 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.
Hilaire Belloc
#9. 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.
Hilaire Belloc
#10. 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.
Hilaire Belloc
#11. 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.
Hilaire Belloc
#12. 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.
Hilaire Belloc
#13. 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.
Hilaire Belloc
#14. Just as there is nothing between the admirable omelet and the intolerable, so with autobiography.
Hilaire Belloc
#15. 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.
Hilaire Belloc
#16. 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.
Hilaire Belloc
#17. 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.
Hilaire Belloc
#18. 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.
Hilaire Belloc
#19. How slow the shadow creeps: but when 'tis past How fast the shadows fall. How fast! How fast!
Hilaire Belloc
#20. If any man gives you a wine you can't bear, don't say it is beastly ... But don't say you like it. You are endangering your soul and the use of wine as well ... Seek out some other wine good to your taste.
Hilaire Belloc
#21. 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.
Hilaire Belloc
#23. Kings live in Palaces, and Pigs in sties, And youth in Expectation. Youth is wise.
Hilaire Belloc
#24. In the perfect Capitalist State there would be no food available for the non-owner save when he was actually engaged in Production, and that absurdity would, by quickly ending all human lives save those of the owners, put a term to the arrangement.
Hilaire Belloc
#25. Do not, I beseech you, be troubled about the increase of forces already in dissolution. You have mistaken the hour of the night; it is already morning.
Hilaire Belloc
#26. Never could an increase of comfort or security be a sufficient good to be bought at the price of liberty.
Hilaire Belloc
#27. The tender Evenlode that makes Her meadows hush to hear the sound Of waters mingling in the brakes, And binds my heart to English ground. A lovely river, all alone, She lingers in the hills and holds A hundred little towns of stone, Forgotten in the western wolds.
Hilaire Belloc
#28. Be content to remember that those who can make omelettes properly can do nothing else.
Hilaire Belloc
#29. [Heresy is] the dislocation of a complete and self-supporting scheme by the introduction of a novel denial of some essential part therein.
Hilaire Belloc
#30. Is there no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have let the vulgar stuff alone.
Hilaire Belloc
#31. 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.
Hilaire Belloc
#32. When people call this beast to mind, They marvel more and more At such a little tail behind, So large a trunk before.
Hilaire Belloc
#33. ... that exasperating quality for which we have no name, which certainly is not accuracy, and which is quite the opposite of judgement, yet which catches the mind as brambles do our clothes.
Hilaire Belloc
#34. When well-divided property has disappeared and Capitalism has taken its place, you cannot reverse the process without acting against natural economic tendencies.
Hilaire Belloc
#35. What is needed is a form of tax which not only spares the small man at the expense of his wealthier rival, but actually subsidizes the small man where subsidy is necessary.
Hilaire Belloc
#36. 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.
Hilaire Belloc
#37. 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.
Hilaire Belloc
#38. Every major question in history is a religious question. It has more effect in molding life than nationalism or a common language.
Hilaire Belloc
#39. It is further an admitted historical truth, which no one denies, that such an institution putting forth such a claim has been present among mankind for many centuries. Many through antagonism or lack of knowledge deny the identity of the Catholic Church today with the original Christian society.
Hilaire Belloc
#40. The world is full of double beds And most delightful maidenheads, Which being so, there's no excuse For sodomy or self-abuse.
Hilaire Belloc
#41. The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself.
Hilaire Belloc
#42. Oh, you should never, never doubt what nobody is sure about.
Hilaire Belloc
#43. 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.
Hilaire Belloc
#44. If antiquity be the only test of nobility, then cheese is a very noble thing ... The lineage of cheese is demonstrably beyond all record.
Hilaire Belloc
#45. For every time she shouted "Fire!" They only answered "Little liar!" And therefore when her aunt returned, Matilda, and the house, were burned.
Hilaire Belloc
#46. We cannot make owners by merely giving men something to own. And, I repeat, whether there be sufficient desire for property left upon which we can work, only experience can decide.
Hilaire Belloc
#47. The essential of the guild-idea is that [of] men pursuing the same form of activity, but only in cooperation limited to the end of preserving the economic freedom-that is the property and livelihood-of each member of the guild.
Hilaire Belloc
#48. 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.
Hilaire Belloc
#49. A strong Protectionist, believes
In everything but Heaven.
For entertainment, dines, receives,
Unmarried, 57.
Hilaire Belloc
#50. The Llama is a woolly sort of fleecy hairy goat, with an indolent expression and an undulating throat; like an unsuccessful literary man.
Hilaire Belloc
#51. 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
Hilaire Belloc
#52. Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight,
But Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right.
Hilaire Belloc
#54. 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.
Hilaire Belloc
#55. 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
Hilaire Belloc
#56. There was a shepherd the other day up at Findon Fair who had come from the east by Lewes with sheep, and who had in his eyes that reminiscence of horizons which makes the eyes of shepherds and of mountaineers different from the eyes of other men.
Hilaire Belloc
#57. The prospect of refreshment at the charges of another is an opportunity never to be neglected by men of clear commercial judgment.
Hilaire Belloc
#58. I shoot the Hippopotamus with bullets made of platinum, because if I use the leaden one his hide is sure to flatten em.
Hilaire Belloc
#59. Oh, my friends, be warned by me, That breakfast, dinner, lunch and tea, Are all human frame requires.
Hilaire Belloc
#60. 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.
Hilaire Belloc
#61. There are few greater temptations on earth than to stay permanently at Oxford in meditation, and to read all the books in the Bodlean.
Hilaire Belloc
#62. 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.
Hilaire Belloc
#63. For one thing, I was no longer alone; a man is never alone with the wind-and the boat made three.
Hilaire Belloc
#64. When you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England.
Hilaire Belloc
#65. 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.
Hilaire Belloc
#66. 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.
Hilaire Belloc
#67. Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
There's always laughter and good red wine.
At least I've always found it so.
Benedicamus Domino!
Hilaire Belloc
#68. Write as the wind blows and command all words like an army!
Hilaire Belloc
#69. 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.'
Hilaire Belloc
#70. [A]lways keep a-hold of Nurse For fear of finding something worse
Hilaire Belloc
#71. There is always something more to be said, and it is always so difficult to turn up the splice neatly at the edges.
Hilaire Belloc
#72. The Church is a perpetually defeated thing that always outlives her conquerers.
Hilaire Belloc
#73. 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.
Hilaire Belloc
#74. 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.
Hilaire Belloc
#75. 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 ...
Hilaire Belloc
#76. If we do not restore the Institution of Property we cannot escape restoring the Institution of Slavery; there is no third course.
Hilaire Belloc
#77. 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.
Hilaire Belloc
#78. Of all fatiguing, futile, empty trades, the worst, I suppose, is writing about writing.
Hilaire Belloc
#79. For I know that we laughers have a gross cousinship with the most high, and it is this contrast and perpetual quarrel which feeds a spring of merriment in the soul of a sane man.
Hilaire Belloc
#80. It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them.
Hilaire Belloc
#81. I said to Heart, "How goes it?" Heart replied: "Right as a Ribstone Pippin!" But it lied.
Hilaire Belloc
#82. I forget the name of the place; I forget the name of the girl; but the wine was Chambertin.
Hilaire Belloc
#83. It has been discovered that with a dull urban population, all formed under a mechanical system of State education, a suggestion or command, however senseless and unreasoned, will be obeyed if it be sufficiently repeated.
Hilaire Belloc
#84. There is thus a very great deal in common between the enthusiasm with which Mohammed's teaching attacked the priesthood, the Mass and the sacraments, and the enthusiasm with which Calvinism, the central motive force of the Reformation, did the same.
Hilaire Belloc
#85. It is sometimes necessary to lie damnably in the interests of the nation.
Hilaire Belloc
#86. The power of the State must be invoked for restoring economic freedom just as it has been invoked for destroying economic freedom.
Hilaire Belloc
#87. I am writing a book about the Crusades so dull that I can scarcely write it.
Hilaire Belloc
#88. He served his god so faithfully and well
That now he sees him face to face in hell.
Hilaire Belloc
#89. I am a sundial, and I make a botch
Of what is done much better by a watch.
Hilaire Belloc
#90. Loss and possession, death and life are one, There falls no shadow where there shines no sun.
Hilaire Belloc
#91. 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.
Hilaire Belloc
#92. Life is a veil, its paths are dark and rough
Only because we do not know enough
When Science has discovered something more
We shall be happier than we were before.
Hilaire Belloc
#93. Like most modern words, "Heresy" is used both vaguely and diversely. It is used vaguely because the modern mind is as averse to precision in ideas as it is enamored of precision in measurement. It is used diversely because, according to the man who uses it, it may represent any one of fifty things.
Hilaire Belloc
#95. Any subject can be made interesting, and therefore any subject can be made boring.
Hilaire Belloc
#96. 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.
Hilaire Belloc
#97. And the men that were boys when I was a boy Shall sit and drink with me.
Hilaire Belloc
#98. 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.
Hilaire Belloc
#99. 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.
Hilaire Belloc
#100. I always like to associate with a lot of priests because it makes me understand anti-clerical things so well.
Hilaire Belloc
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