Hilaire Belloc Quotes

[M]others of large families (who claim to common sense)
Will find a Tiger well repay the trouble and expense.

Timeo hominem unius mulieris. (''A man who keeps to one woman is formidable.'')

You know (to adopt the easy or conversational style) that you and I belong to a happy minority. We are the sons of the hunters and the wandering singers, and from our boyhood nothing ever gave us greater pleasure than to stand under lonely skies in forest clearings, or to find a beach looking westward at evening over unfrequented seas. But the great mass of men love companionship so much that nothing seems of any worth compared with it. Human communion is their meat and drink, and so they use the railways to make bigger and bigger hives for themselves.

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.

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

It was the defection of the English Crown, the immense booty rapidly obtained by a few adventurers, like the Cecils and Russells, and a still smaller number of old families, like the Howards, which put England, with all its profound traditions and with all its organic inheritance of the great European thing, upon the side of the Northern Germanies. It was inevitable, therefore, that in England the fruits should first appear, for here only was there deep soil. That fruit upon which our modern observation has been most fixed was Capitalism. Capitalism proceeded from England and from the English Reformation; but it was not fully alive until the early eighteenth century. In the nineteenth it matured.

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.

Mr. Orage, one of the most active and intelligent reformers for the last generation in England, attempted this very thing. He, in his little intellectual review which was supported by so brilliant a group of writers for so many years, published week after week the ingredients of the English patent medicines and the cost of those ingredients. Not a single one of the newspapers followed suit, or dared publish so much as the fact that Orage was thus acting courageously in his own limited sphere for the public good.

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

I have wandered all my life, and I have traveled; the difference between the two being this, that we wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.

The artist, though he is not at the root of human affairs, is a necessary and proper ally in their development.

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

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.

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

Oh, you should never, never doubt what nobody is sure about.