Hilaire Belloc Quotes

143 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

Hilaire Belloc
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.

Hilaire Belloc
As a friend to the children commend me the Yak. You will find it exactly the thing: It will carry and fetch, you can ride on its back, Or lead it about with a string.

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
Such are the mass of the supporters of either party. They derive their political opinions originally from some family tradition or some fanciful preference, but they back them with all the passion of sportsmen. In a vague subconscious way they know it is a game, but they happen to enjoy playing the game.

Hilaire Belloc
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
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
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
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
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.

Hilaire Belloc
It has unfortunately now become a habit for so many generations, that it has almost passed into an instinct throughout the Jewish body, to rely upon the weapon of secrecy. Secret societies, a language kept as far as possible secret, the use of false names in order to hide secret movements, secret relations between various parts of the Jewish body: all these and other forms of secrecy have become the national method.

Hilaire Belloc
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
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
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.

Hilaire Belloc
And take the sun and air, The sun yet warms his native ground — The Dodo is not there! The voice which used to squawk and squeak Is now for ever dumb — You may you see his bones and beak All in the Mu-se-um.

Hilaire Belloc
The Vulture eats between his meals, And that's the reason why He very, very rarely feels As well as you and I.

Hilaire Belloc
To control the production of wealth is to control human life itself. To refuse man the opportunity for the production of wealth is to refuse him the opportunity for life; and, in general, the way in which the production of wealth is by law permitted is the only way in which the citizens can legally exist.

Hilaire Belloc
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
Slowly but certainly the proletarian, by every political reform which secures his well-being under new rules of insurance, of State control in education, of State medicine and the rest, is developing into the slave, leaving the rich man apart and free. All industrial civilization is clearly moving towards the re-establishment of the Servile State.

Hilaire Belloc
The Rich arrived in pairs
And also in Rolls Royces;
They talked of their affairs
In loud and strident voices...

The Poor arrived in Fords,
Whose features they resembled;
They laughed to see so many Lords
And Ladies all assembled.

The People in Between
Looked underdone and harassed,
And our of place and mean,
And Horribly embarrassed.

Hilaire Belloc
The student must be careful in calculations involving the decimal point to put it in its exact place, neither too much to the right nor too much to the left.

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