Hilaire Belloc Quotes

143 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hilaire Belloc
The Science of Economics does not deal with true happiness nor even with well-being in material things. It deals with a strictly limited field of what is called "Economic Wealth," and if it goes outside its own boundaries it goes wrong.

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

Hilaire Belloc
Remote and ineffectual Don
That dared attack my Chesterton.

Hilaire Belloc
No one truly loves history who is not more exalted according to the greater age of the new things he finds.

Hilaire Belloc
Even where the Faith is preserved men pursue wealth and power inordinately. Where the Faith is lost they pursue nothing else.

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

Hilaire Belloc
All teaching is dogmatic. Dogma, indeed, means only "a thing taught," and teaching not dogmatic would cease to be teaching and would become discussion and doubt.

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

Hilaire Belloc
And what is there else but pleasure, and to what else does beauty move on?

Hilaire Belloc
Life is a vale, 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
When friendship disappears then there is a space left open to that awful loneliness of the outside which is like the cold of space between the planets. It is an air in which men perish utterly. Absolute dereliction is the death of the soul.

Hilaire Belloc
'… and as to what may be in this book, do not feel timid nor hesitate to enter. There are more mountains than molehills …'

Hilaire Belloc
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
Matilda told such Dreadful Lies,
It made one Gasp and Stretch one's Eyes;
Her Aunt, who from her Earliest Youth,
Had kept a Strict Regard for Truth,
Attempted to Believe Matilda:
The effort very nearly killed her.

Hilaire Belloc
Logically the Neo-Pagan should get rid of the institution of marriage altogether; but the very nature of human society, which is built up of cells each of which is a family, and the very nature of human generation, forbid such an extreme. Children must be brought up and acknowledged and sheltered, and the very nature of human affection, whereby there is the bond of affection between the parent and the child, and the child is not of one parent but of both, will compel the Neo-Pagan to modify what might be his logical conclusion of free love and support some simulacrum of the institution of marriage.

Hilaire Belloc
The Tiger, on the other hand, is kittenish and mild,
He makes a pretty play fellow for any little child;
And mothers of large families (who claim to common sense)
Will find a Tiger well repay the trouble and expense.

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

Hilaire Belloc