80 quotes
[I]n words lie the seeds of all dissension, and love at its most profound is silent.
A Conversation with a Cat, and Others (1931)
What! Would you slap the Porcupine?
Unhappy child — desist!
Alas! That any friend of mine
Should turn Tupto-philist.
More Beasts for Worse Children (1897)
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."
Cautionary Tales for Children (1907)
It was my shame, and now it is my boast,
That I have loved you rather more than most.
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.
Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight,
But Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right.
Sonnets and Verse (1938)
Kings live in Palaces, and Pigs in sties,
And youth in Expectation. Youth is wise.
Sonnets and Verse (1938)
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.
Hilaire Belloc (1925)
Then let us love one another and laugh. Time passes, and we shall soon laugh no longer—and meanwhile common living is a burden, and earnest men are in siege upon us all around. Let us suffer absurdities, for this is only to suffer one another.
The Path to Rome (1902)
I put my pencil upon the paper, doubtfully, and drew little lines, considering my theme. But I would not long hesitate in this manner, for I knew that all creation must be chaos first, and then gestures in the void before it can cast out the completed thing.
The Four Men: A Farrago (1911)
Of three in One and One in three
My narrow mind would doubting be
Till Beauty, Grace and Kindness met
And all at once were Juliet.
Hilaire Belloc (1925)
May all good fellows that here agree
Drink Audit Ale in heaven with me,
And may all my enemies go to hell!
Noël! Noël! Noël! Noël!
May all my enemies go to hell!
Noël! Noël!
The Four Men: A Farrago (1911)
It is not insignificant that the Church, in the rare places and times when she had power to do so, did not compel the mind. During all that intense intellectual life of the thirteenth century instruction was by choice: endowed—so that the poorest could reach the highest inspiration, but at the choice of the individual or family will, to be taken or left.
Survivals and New Arrivals: The Old and New Enemies of the Catholic Church (1929)
[M]others of large families (who claim to common sense)
Will find a Tiger well repay the trouble and expense.
The Bad Child's Book of Beasts (1896)
You shall receive me when the clouds are high
With evening and the sheep attain the fold.
This is the faith that I have held and hold,
And this is that in which I mean to die.
Hilaire Belloc (1925)
The accursed power which stands on Privilege
(And goes with Women, and Champagne and Bridge)
Broke — and Democracy resumed her reign:
(Which goes with Bridge, and Women and Champagne).
Hilaire Belloc (1925)
That I grow sour, who only lack delight;
That I descend to sneer, who only grieve:
That from my depth I should contemn your height;
That with my blame my mockery you receive;
Huntress and splendour of the woodland night,
Diana of this world, do not believe.
Sonnets and Verse (1938)
The tender Evenlode that makes
Her meadows hush to hear the sound
Of waters mingling in the brakes,
And binds my heart to English ground. A lovely river, all alone,
She lingers in the hills and holds
A hundred little towns of stone,
Forgotten in the western wolds.
Verses (1910)
How did the party go in Portman Square?
I cannot tell you; Juliet was not there.
And how did Lady Gaster's party go?
Juliet was next me and I do not know.
The Barbarian hopes — and that is the very mark of him — that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilisation has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort but he will not be at pains to replace such goods nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. Discipline seems to him irrational, on which account he is for ever marvelling that civilisation should have offended him with priests and soldiers.
This and That and the Other (1912)