Quotes from Hilaire Belloc

The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself.

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

Write as the wind blows and command all words like an army!

When friendship disappears then there is a space left open to that awful loneliness of the outside world which is like the cold space between the planets. It is an air in which men perish utterly.

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

No, she laughed." How on earth could that be done? If you try to laugh and say 'No' at the same time, it sounds like neighing — yet people are perpetually doing it in novels. If they did it in real life they would be locked up.

If we are to be happy, decent and secure of our souls: drink some kind of fermented liquor with one's food; go on the water from time to time; dance on occasions, and sing in a chorus...

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

For I know that we laughers have a gross cousinship with the most high, and it is this contrast and perpetual quarrel which feeds a spring of merriment in the soul of a sane man.

Do not, I beseech you, be troubled about the increase of forces already in dissolution. You have mistaken the hour of the night; it is already morning.

Steep are the seas and savaging and cold In broken waters terrible to try; And vast against the winter night the wold, And harbourless for any sail to lie. But you shall lead me to the lights, and I Shall hymn you in a harbour story told. This is the faith that I have held and hold, And this is that in which I mean to die.

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.

In the perfect Capitalist State there would be no food available for the non-owner save when he was actually engaged in Production, and that absurdity would, by quickly ending all human lives save those of the owners, put a term to the arrangement.

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.

Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, there's always laughter and good red wine.

Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight, But Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right.

A Catholic culture does not mean or imply universality. A nation or a whole civilization is of the Catholic culture not when it is entirely composed of strong believers minutely practicing their religion, nor even whit it boasts a majority of such, but when it presents a determining number of units-family institutions, individuals, inspired by and tenacious of the Catholic spirit.

He served his god so faithfully and well That now he sees him face to face in hell.

It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them.

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

When friendship disappears then there is a space left open to that awful loneliness of the outside world which is like the cold space between the planets. It is an air in which men perish utterly.

[A]lways keep a-hold of Nurse For fear of finding something worse

If antiquity be the only test of nobility, then cheese is a very noble thing ... The lineage of cheese is demonstrably beyond all record.

I forget the name of the place; I forget the name of the girl; but the wine was Chambertin.