Hilaire Belloc Quotes

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

1340

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

4021

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.

2960

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.

1790

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

2584

It has been discovered that with a dull urban population, all formed under a mechanical system of State education, a suggestion or command, however senseless and unreasoned, will be obeyed if it be sufficiently repeated.

1682

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.

4119

For no one, in our long decline,
So dusty, spiteful and divided,
Had quite such pleasant friends as mine,
Or loved them half as much as I did.

1969