Hilaire Belloc Quotes

143 Sourced Quotes

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.

Hilaire Belloc
Loss and Possession, Death and Life are one.
There falls no shadow where there shines no sun.

Hilaire Belloc
Just as there is nothing between the admirable omelette and the intolerable, so with autobiography.

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

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

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

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

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

Hilaire Belloc
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.

Hilaire Belloc
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
I recognised that I was (and I confessed) in that attitude of the mind wherein men admit mortality; something had already passed from me—I mean that fresh and vigorous morning of the eyes wherein the beauty of this land had been reflected as in a tiny mirror of burnished silver. Youth was gone out apart; it was loved and regretted, and therefore no longer possessed.

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

Hilaire Belloc
Death […] people nowadays seem to regard as something odd, whereas it is well known to be the commonest thing in the world.

Hilaire Belloc
Oh, my friends, be warned by me,
That Breakfast, Dinner, Lunch, and Tea
Are all the Human Frame requires.

Hilaire Belloc
Of this bad world the loveliest and the best Has smiled and said "Good Night," and gone to rest.

Hilaire Belloc
I said to Heart, "How goes it?" Heart replied:
"Right as a Ribstone Pippin!" But it lied.

Hilaire Belloc
A smell of burning fills the startled air —
The Electrician is no longer there!

Hilaire Belloc
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!

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

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

Hilaire Belloc
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
If antiquity be the test of nobility, as many affirm and none deny…then cheese is a very noble thing.

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

Hilaire Belloc
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