Quotes from Hilaire Belloc

Let me put it thus: that from the height of Weissenstein I saw, as it were, my religion. I mean, humility, the fear of death, the terror of height and of distance, the glory of God, the infinite potentiality of reception whence springs that divine thirst of the soul; my aspiration also towards completion, and my confidence in the dual destiny.

A man going uphill may be at the same level as another man going down hill; but they are facing different ways and have different destinies. Our world, passing out of the old Paganism of Greece and Rome towards the consummation of Christendom and a Catholic civilization from which we all derive, is the very negation of the same world leaving the light of its ancestral religion and sliding back into the dark.

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.

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

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.

I say the word Anti-Semite is vulgar and pedantic : that I think will be universally admitted. It is also nonsensical. The antagonism to the Jews has nothing to do with any supposed Semitic race which probably does not exist any more than do many other modern hypothetical abstractions, and which, anyhow, does not come into the matter. The Anti-Semite is not a man who hates the modern Arabs or the ancient Carthaginians. He is a man who hates Jews.

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.

The reason the Dead do not return nowadays is the boredom of it.

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.

There is and always has been the Church, and various heresies proceeding from a rejection of some of the Church's doctrines by men who still desire to retain the rest of her teaching and morals.

But anyhow, when you take up your pen you do something devilish pleasing: there is a prospect before you. You are going to develop a germ: I don't know what it is, and I promise you I won't call it creation—but possibly a god is creating through you, and at least you are making believe at creation. Anyhow, it is a sense of mastery and of origin, and you know that when you have done, something will be added to the world, and little destroyed.

In the English County of Sussex, upon the clay thereof, and upon a slight eminence of that clay, stood and stands a squire's house called Rackham.

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.

But there is some influence in vows or plans that escapes our power of rejudgement. All false calculations must be paid for, and I found, as you will see, that having said I would sleep in the open, I had to keep to it in spite of all my second thoughts.

Ha de saberse que si se cede a una tentación, muy luego se presenta como el rayo la oportunidad de incurrir en ella.

the absolute monopoly of the soil, the gripping and the strangling of the populace by landlords, is a purely Protestant development.

There is no more fatal fault in the reading of history, nor any illusion to which the human mind is more prone. To read the remote past in the light of the recent past; to think the process of the one towards the other inevitable; to regard the whole matter as a slow inexorable process, independent of the human will, still suits the materialist pantheism of our time.

Capitalism must be kept alive by non-capitalist methods.

I watched a train come in. It was full of tourists, who (it may have been a subjective illusion) seemed to me common and worthless people, and sad into the bargain.

economics are but an expression of the mind and do not (as the poor blind slaves of the great cities think) mould the mind.

Write as the wind blows and command all words like an army! See them how they stand in rank ready for assault, the jolly, swaggering fellows!

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.

bridgehead beyond, upon the southern shore. And thereby, should help come to them, they might cross the Loire in strength into Charles's land and perhaps overcome him yet. Therefore

Let us suffer absurdities, for that is only to suffer one another.