H Belloc Quotes & Sayings

The power of the State must be invoked for restoring economic freedom just as it has been invoked for destroying economic freedom. — Hilaire Belloc

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. — Hilaire Belloc

[Heresy is] the dislocation of a complete and self-supporting scheme by the introduction of a novel denial of some essential part therein. — Hilaire Belloc

When you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England. — Hilaire Belloc

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

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

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

To control the production of wealth is to control human life itself. To refuse man the opportunity for the production of wealth is to refuse him the opportunity for life; and, in general, the way in which the production of wealth is by law permitted is the only way in which the citizens can legally exist. — Hilaire Belloc

There is no one who has cooked but has discovered that each particular dish depends for its rightness upon some little point which he is never told. It is not only so of cooking: it is so of splicing a rope; of painting a surface of wood; of mixing mortar; of almost anything you like to name among the immemorial human arts. — Hilaire Belloc

Communism worked honestly by officials devoid of human frailties and devoted to nothing but the good of its slaves, would have certain manifest material advantages as compared with a proletarian wage-system where millions live in semi-starvation, and many millions more in permanent dread thereof. But even if it were administered thus Communism would only produce its benefits through imposing slavery. — Hilaire Belloc

There is thus a very great deal in common between the enthusiasm with which Mohammed's teaching attacked the priesthood, the Mass and the sacraments, and the enthusiasm with which Calvinism, the central motive force of the Reformation, did the same. — Hilaire Belloc

Since it is to the advantage of the wage-payer to pay as little as possible, even well-paid labor will have no more than what is regarded in a particular society as the reasonable level of subsistence. The lower ranks of labor will commonly have less, and if public relief were afforded even up to the wage-level of the lowest ranks of labor, that relief would compete in the labor market; check or dry up the supply of wage-labor. It would tend to render the performance of work by the wage-earner redundant. — Hilaire Belloc

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

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

The propaganda of Communism throughout the world, in organization and direction is in the hands of Jewish agents. As for anyone who does not know that the Bolshevist movement in Russia is Jewish, I can only say that he must be a man who is taken in by the suppression of our deplorable press. — Hilaire Belloc

I am writing a book about the Crusades so dull that I can scarcely write it. — Hilaire Belloc

Upon being asked by a Reader whether the verses contained in this book were true. And is it True? It is not True. And if it were it wouldn't do, For people such as me and you Who pretty nearly all day long Are doing something rather wrong. Because if things were really so, You would have perished long ago, And I would not have lived to write The noble lines that meet your sight, Nor B. T. B. survived to draw The nicest things you ever saw. H. B. — Hilaire Belloc

You know (to adopt the easy or conversational style) that you and I belong to a happy minority. We are the sons of the hunters and the wandering singers, and from our boyhood nothing ever gave us greater pleasure than to stand under lonely skies in forest clearings, or to find a beach looking westward at evening over unfrequented seas. But the great mass of men love companionship so much that nothing seems of any worth compared with it. Human communion is their meat and drink, and so they use the railways to make bigger and bigger hives for themselves. — Hilaire Belloc

It was the Faith which gradually and indirectly transformed the slave into the serf, and the serf into the free peasant ... You will not be able to set up in a pagan or an heretical or a wholly indifferent society the institutions characteristic of economic freedom; you will not be able to curb competition which alone would be sufficient to destroy such freedom, nor pursue permanently and consecutively anyone part of the program. The thing must be done as a whole, and it can be done as a whole only by the ambient influence of Catholicism. — Hilaire Belloc

Dear Grandmamma, with what we give. We humbly pray that you may live. For many, many happy years: Although you bore us all to tears. — Hilaire Belloc

Put you hand before your eyes and remember, you that have walked, the places from which you have walked away, and the wilderness into which you manfully turned the steps of your abandonment ... It is your business to leave all that you have know altogether behind you, and no man has eyes at the back of his head - go forward. — Hilaire Belloc

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. — Hilaire Belloc

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. — Hilaire Belloc

A strong Protectionist, believes
In everything but Heaven.
For entertainment, dines, receives,
Unmarried, 57. — Hilaire Belloc

The moment a man talks to his fellows he begins to lie. — Hilaire Belloc

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. — Hilaire Belloc

Is there no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have let the vulgar stuff alone. — Hilaire Belloc

Take the particular trick of false names. It seems to us particularly odious. We think when we show our contempt for those who use this subterfuge that we are giving them no more than they deserve. It is a meanness which we associate with criminals and vagabonds; a piece of crawling and sneaking ... Men whose race is universally known, will unblushingly adopt a false name as a mask, and after a year or two pretend to treat it as an insult if their original and true name be used in its place. — Hilaire Belloc

What is needed is a form of tax which not only spares the small man at the expense of his wealthier rival, but actually subsidizes the small man where subsidy is necessary. — Hilaire Belloc

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

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. — Hilaire Belloc

The term "Socialism" becomes a common label for the various theories of attack upon the principle of property, the various policies of communal control at the expense of the family and individual freedom. — Hilaire Belloc