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