There is not anything that can so suddenly flood the mind with shame as the conviction of ignorance, yet we are all ignorant of nearly everything there is to be known.
— Hilaire Belloc
Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death.
Is there no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have let the vulgar stuff alone.
Any subject can be made interesting, and therefore any subject can be made boring.
When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.
Just as there is nothing between the admirable omelet and the intolerable, so with autobiography.
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.
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.
The pilgrim is humble and devout, and human, and charitable, and ready to smile and admire; therefore, he should comprehend the whole of his way, the people in it, and the hills and the clouds, and the habits of the various cities.
Every major question in history is a religious question. It has more effect in molding life than nationalism or a common language.
Oh, my friends, be warned by me, That breakfast, dinner, lunch and tea, Are all human frame requires.
It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them.
Be content to remember that those who can make omelettes properly can do nothing else.
The grace of God is courtesy.
Child! Do not throw this book about; refrain from the unholy pleasure of cutting all the pictures out.
It is sometimes necessary to lie damnably in the interests of the nation.
The moment a man talks to his fellows he begins to lie.
Money gives me pleasure all the time.
An institute run with such knavish imbecility that if it were not the work of God it would not last a fortnight.
Of all fatiguing, futile, empty trades, the worst, I suppose, is writing about writing.
The microbe is so very small: You cannot take him out at all.
I am writing a book about the Crusades so dull that I can scarcely write it.
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'm tired of love; I'm still more tired of rhyme; but money gives me pleasure all the time.
Loss and possession, death and life are one, There falls no shadow where there shines no sun.
