Hilaire Belloc
Such are the mass of the supporters of either party. They derive their political opinions originally from some family tradition or some fanciful preference, but they back them with all the passion of sportsmen. In a vague subconscious way they know it is a game, but they happen to enjoy playing the game.Collection: Party
I shoot the Hippopotamus with bullets made of platinum, because if I use the leaden one his hide is sure to flatten em.Collection: Animal
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. [stanza 3]The library was most inviting:The books upon the crowded shelvesWere mainly of our private writing:We kept a school and taught ourselves. [stanza 15]From quiet homes and first beginning,Out to the undiscovered ends,Theres nothing worth the wear of winning,But laughter and the love of friends. [stanza 22]You do retain the song we set,And how it rises, trips and scans?You keep the sacred memory yet,Republicans? Republicans?[stanza 36]Collection: Love
The larger unit can borrow more easily in proportion than the smaller. It can especially tap bank credit more easily and bank credit is, to-day, the chief factor in economic activity of all kinds.Collection: Wisdom
Matilda told such dreadful lies, It made one gasp and stretch one's eyes Her aunt, who, from her earliest youth, Had kept a strict regard for truth, Attempted to believe Matilda The effort very nearly killed her.Collection: Lying
Child! do not throw this book about Refrain from the unholy pleasure Of cutting all the pictures out! Preserve it as your chiefest treasure.Collection: Children
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.Collection: Men
It seems to be saying perpetually; 'I am the end of the nineteenth century; I am glad they built me of iron; let me rust.' ... It is like a passing fool in a crowd of the University, a buffoon in the hall; for all the things in Paris has made, it alone has neither wits nor soul.Collection: Engineering
Protest against Industrial Capitalism from one aspect or another is universal: so was the protest against the condition of European religion at the beginning of the sixteenth century.Collection: Politics
There are few greater temptations on earth than to stay permanently at Oxford in meditation, and to read all the books in the Bodlean.Collection: Book
Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight. But roaring Bill, who killed him, thought it right.Collection: Military
The old freedom sufficiently survives in the mind of the wage earner to give him the illusion that, while accepting insurance and maintenance from the capitalist state, he can still be a full citizen. He thinks he can have his cake and eat it too. He is mistaken. The great capitalists who procured these regulations from the politicians knew what they were at. They were catching their proletariat in a net, and now they hold it fast.Collection: Wisdom
The choice lies between property on the one hand and slavery, public or private, on the other. There is no third issue.Collection: Lying
It has unfortunately now become a habit for so many generations, that it has almost passed into an instinct throughout the Jewish body, to rely upon the weapon of secrecy. Secret societies, a language kept as far as possible secret, the use of false names in order to hide secret movements, secret relations between various parts of the Jewish body: all these and other forms of secrecy have become the national method.Collection: Order
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.Collection: Real
Of old when folk lay sick and sorely tried The doctors gave them physic, and they died. But here's a happier age: for now we know Both how to make men sick and keep them so.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Wisdom
It is therefore our business to restore economic freedom through the restoration of the only institution under which it flourishes, which institution is Property. The problem before us is, how to restore Property so that it shall be, as it was not so long ago, a general institution.Collection: Long Ago
The sea drives truth into a man like salt.Collection: Men
Great artistic talent in any direction... is hardly inherent to the man. It comes and goes; it is often possessed only for a short phase in his life; it hardly ever colors his character as a whole and has nothing to do with the moral and intellectual stuff of the mind and soul. Many great artists, perhaps most great artists, have been poor fellows indeed, whom to know was to despise.Collection: Character
I forget the name of the place; I forget the name of the girl; but the wine was Chambertin.Collection: Girl
Of courtesy, it is much less Than courage of heart or holiness, Yet in my walks it seems to me That the Grace of God is in courtesy.Collection: Courage
The smaller man approaching our modern banking system, which controls all issue of credit and therefore pretty well all our industrial and commercial activities, is not what the controllers of that credit call "interesting." He borrows with difficulty and upon high terms, and must pledge security out of all proportion to that which his richer rival has to put down.Collection: Men
When people call this beast to mind, They marvel more and more At such a little tail behind, So large a trunk before.Collection: People
Kings live in Palaces, and Pigs in sties, And youth in Expectation. Youth is wise.Collection: Wise
If you can describe clearly without a diagram the proper way of making this or that knot, then you are a master of the English language.Collection: Writing
In the form of security and sufficiency for the men who labor to the profit of others, and in the form of registering and controlling them in the form of an organized public supervision of their labor, slavery is already afoot. When slavery shall succeed it will succeed through the acquiescence of those who will be enslaved, for they will prefer sufficiency and security with enslavement, to freedom, responsibility, insecurity and the threat of insufficiency.Collection: Wisdom
Had there been any existent vital and energetic institution left in Society after the Reformation for the use of small property in coordinated form-that is, in combination, so that the average man's holding could be put to useful purpose in company with the holdings of a great number of other men of his own sort, the new evils would not have arisen.Collection: Wisdom
The terror in which English capitalists now stand of organized proletarian resistance gives to the naturally protected craft organizations the power to receive the wages they demand. They act as they have been trained to act by capitalist society, which denies the doctrine of the Just Price, which proclaims work to be an evil and the goal of human endeavor to be the avoidance of it; which puts it up as an ideal that individuals should get as much money as they possibly can out of their fellows by any means in their power.Collection: Wisdom
You are my cat, and I am your human.Collection: Cat
[Heresy is] the dislocation of a complete and self-supporting scheme by the introduction of a novel denial of some essential part therein.Collection: Self
For one thing, I was no longer alone; a man is never alone with the wind-and the boat made three.Collection: Men
Consider in what way the industrial system developed upon capitalist lines. Why were a few rich men put with such ease into possession of the new methods? Why was it normal and natural in their eyes and in that of contemporary society that those who produced the new wealth with the new machinery should be proletarian and dispossessed?Collection: Eye
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.Collection: Long
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.Collection: Wisdom
If any man gives you a wine you can't bear, don't say it is beastly... But don't say you like it. You are endangering your soul and the use of wine as well... Seek out some other wine good to your taste.Collection: Food
Let us then repeat and firmly fix this main point: the evil, the root evil, of that to which the term Capitalism has come to be applied, is neither its functioning for profit nor its dependence upon legally protected private property; but the presence of a Proletariat, that is of men possessing political freedom, but dispossessed of economic freedom, and existing in such large numbers in any community as to determine the tone of all that community.Collection: Wisdom
The very large units of production and exchange have access to credit on a large scale, sometimes without any cover at all, merely upon the prospect of their success, and always upon terms far easier than are open to their smaller rivals. It is perhaps on this line of easier credit that large capital today does most harm to small capital, drives it out and ruins it.Collection: Doe
The whole art of the political speech is to put 'nothing' into it. It is much more difficult than it sounds.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Grandma
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.Collection: Water
Whatever happens, we have got The Maxim gun, and they have not.Collection: Gun
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.Collection: Believe
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.Collection: Heart
Torture will give a dozen pence or more To keep a drab from bawling at his door. The public taste is quite a different thing Torture is positively paid to sing.Collection: Doors
The Devil, having nothing else to do Went off to tempt my Lady Poltagrue. My Lady, tempted by a private whim, To his extreme annoyance, tempted him.Collection: Evil