Quotes from Hilaire Belloc

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

And the men that were boys when I was a boy Shall sit and drink with me.

It has long been recognized by public men of all kinds. . . that statistics come under the head of lying, and that no lie is so false or inconclusive as that which is based on statistics.

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.

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

Child! Do not throw this book about; refrain from the unholy pleasure of cutting all the pictures out.

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

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

We cannot make owners by merely giving men something to own. And, I repeat, whether there be sufficient desire for property left upon which we can work, only experience can decide.

It is easier to command a lapdog or a mule for a whole day than one's own fate for half-an-hour.

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

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.

From the towns all Inns have been driven: from the villages most.... Change your hearts or you will lose your Inns and you will deserve to have lost them. But when you have lost your Inns drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England.

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. Is it not wonderful, then, that we should be so sensitive upon the discovery of a fault which must of necessity be common to all, and that in its highest degree?

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

We humans make all that present which is never there, and which is always hurrying past us like the tumble of a stream, an all-important thing.

Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death.

It is solely by believing himself a creature but little lower than the cherubim that man has by interminable small degrees become, upon the whole, distinctly superior to the chimpanzee.

It is in the irony of Providence that the more man comes to control the material world about him, the more does he lose control over the effects of his action; and it is when he is remaking the world most speedily that he knows least whither he is driving.

Kings live in Palaces, and Pigs in sties, And youth in Expectation. Youth is wise.

Your life is like a little flute complaining A long way off, beyond the willow trees: A long way off, and nothing left remaining But memory of a music on the breeze.

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

Of this bad world the loveliest and the bestHas smiled and said "Good Night," and gone to rest.

Here richly, with ridiculous display,The Politician's corpse was laid away.While all of his acquaintance sneered and slangedI wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.