Quotes from Hilaire Belloc

What followed for two hours was such an adventure as only wretched amateurs would indulge in...

Godolphin Horne was Nobly Born; He held the Human Race in Scorn.

In the Seventeenth Century a man feared to go to Mass lest the Judges should punish him. To-day a man fears to speak in favor of some social theory which he holds to be just and true lest his master should punish him.

Such was the transformation which had come over European society in the course of ten Christian centuries. Slavery had gone, and in its place had come that establishment of free possession which seemed so normal to men, and so consonant to a happy human life. No particular name was then found for it. To-day, and now that it has disappeared, we must construct an awkward one, and say that the Middle Ages had instinctively conceived and brought into existence the Distributive State.

Some Generations ago a man challenged to tell you why he forswore his manhood in any particular regard would have answered you that it was because he feared punishment at the hands of the law; to-day he will tell you that it is because he fears unemployment... In the Seventeenth Century a man feared to go to Mass lest the Judges should punish him. To-day a man fears to speak in favor of some social theory which he holds to be just and true lest his master should punish him.

When you have lost your inns, you may drown your empty selves. For you have lost the heart of England.

The poet Hilaire Belloc included the following poem about the dodo in his Bad Child's Book of Beasts from 1896: The Dodo used to walk around, 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 – Yet may you see his bones and beak All in the Mu-se-um.[147]

Por qué el desayuno difiere de las demás cosas, hasta el punto de que los griegos lo llamaron lo mejor del mundo?

The contemplation of the Dark Ages affords a powerful criticism of that superficial theory of social evolution which is among the intellectual plagues of our own generation. Much more is the story of Europe like the waking and the sleeping of a mature man, than like any indefinite increase in the aptitudes and powers of a growing body.

To begin at the beginning is, next to ending at the end, the whole art of writing; as for the middle you may fill it in with any rubble that you choose.

There is not anything that can so suddenly flood the mind with shame as the conviction of ignorance, yet we are all ignorant of nearly everything there is to be known.

The other day I noticed that my Muse, who had long been ailing, silent and morose, was showing signs of actual illness. Now, though it is by no means one of my habits to coddle the dogs, cats and other familiars of my household, yet my Muse had so pitiful an appearance that I determined to send for the doctor, but not before I had seen her to bed with a hot bottle, a good supper, and such other comforts as the Muses are accustomed to value.

All men have an instinct for conflict: at least, all healthy men.

A microbe is so very small You cannot make him out at all.

We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creed refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.

There's nothing worth the wear of winning but laughter, and the love of friends.

Oh! Let us never, never doubt What nobody is sure about.

Physicians of the Utmost Fame were called at once, but when they came they answered, as they took their fees, 'There is no cure for this disease.'

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

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

The Reformation has been called in a biting epigram "a rising of the rich against the poor."

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.

The Llama is a woolly sort of fleecy hairy goat, with an indolent expression and an undulating throat; like an unsuccessful literary man.

The gentleman is generous and treats all men as his equals, especially those whom he feels to be inferior in rank and wealth.