Quotes by Hilaire Belloc

• The moment a man talks to his fellows he begins to lie.
• It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them.
• We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.
• When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.
• The microbe is so very small: You cannot take him out at all.
• The grace of God is courtesy.
• Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death.
• Oh, my friends, be warned by me, That breakfast, dinner, lunch and tea, Are all human frame requires.
• Of all fatiguing, futile, empty trades, the worst, I suppose, is writing about writing.
• Money gives me pleasure all the time.
• Loss and possession, death and life are one, There falls no shadow where there shines no sun.
• Just as there is nothing between the admirable omelet and the intolerable, so with autobiography.
• Be content to remember that those who can make omelettes properly can do nothing else.
• It is sometimes necessary to lie damnably in the interests of the nation.
• 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.
• All men have an instinct for conflict: at least, all healthy men.
• Any subject can be made interesting, and therefore any subject can be made boring.
• Child! Do not throw this book about; refrain from the unholy pleasure of cutting all the pictures out.
• Every major question in history is a religious question. It has more effect in molding life than nationalism or a common language.
• From quiet homes and first beginning, out to the undiscovered ends, there's nothing worth the wear of winning, but laughter and the love of friends.
• I am writing a book about the Crusades so dull that I can scarcely write it.
• I have wandered all my life, and I have also traveled; the difference between the two being this, that we wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.
• I'm tired of love; I'm still more tired of rhyme; but money gives me pleasure all the time.
• Is there no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have let the vulgar stuff alone.
• An institute run with such knavish imbecility that if it were not the work of God it would not last a fortnight.
• Don't give up on your dreams; keep sleeping.