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One Man In One Mood Will Attack Industrial Capitalism For Its Destruction Of Beauty; Another For Its Incompetence; Another For The Vileness Of The Men Who Chiefly Prosper Under It; Another For Its Mere Confusion And Noise; Another For Its False Values; It Was Until Recently Most Fiercely Attacked For Its Impoverishment Of The Workers, Its Margin Of Unemployment And The Rest - Indeed So Fiercely That It Was Compelled To Seek Palliatives For The Evil. With A Mass Of Men It Was Attacked From A Vague But Strong Sense Of Injustice; It Allowed A Few Rich To Exploit Mankind.

-Hilaire Belloc

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One Man In One

Hilaire Belloc

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One Man In One Mood Will Attack Industrial Capitalism For Its Destruction Of Beauty; Another For Its Incompetence; Another For The Vileness Of The Men Who Chiefly Prosper Under It; Another For Its Mere Confusion And Noise; Another For Its False Values; It Was Until Recently Most Fiercely Attacked For Its Impoverishment Of The Workers, Its Margin Of Unemployment And The Rest - Indeed So Fiercely That It Was Compelled To Seek Palliatives For The Evil. With A Mass Of Men It Was Attacked From A Vague But Strong Sense Of Injustice; It Allowed A Few Rich To Exploit Mankind.

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I Am A Sundial, And I Make A Botch Of What Is Done Much Better By A Watch.

The Larger The Unit Of Capital Present, The Easier The Transaction Called Emission Of Credit. Centralized Lending Of This Kind (which Is Today Universal) Actively Promotes The Absorption Of The Small Man By The Great, The Reduction Of Small Property Owners To A Proletarian Condition.

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.

Every Major Question In History Is A Religious Question. It Has More Effect In Molding Life Than Nationalism Or A Common Language.

The Catholic Church Is An Institution I Am Bound To Hold Divine - But For Unbelievers A Proof Of Its Divinity Might Be Found In The Fact That No Merely Human Institution Conducted With Such Knavish Imbecility Would Have Lasted A Fortnight.

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.

You Are My Cat, And I Am Your Human.

The Society Of Christendom And Especially Of Western Christendom Up To The Explosion, Which We Call The Reformation, Had Been A Society Of Owners: A Proprietarial Society. It Was One In Which There Remained Strong Bonds Between One Class And Another, And In Which There Was A Hierarchy Of Superior And Inferior, But Not, In The Main, A Distinction Between A Restricted Body Of Possessors And A Main Body Of Destitute At The Mercy Of The Possessors, Such As Our Society Has Become.

When The Mass Of Families In A State Are Without Property, Then Those Who Were Once Citizens Become Virtually Slaves. The More The State Steps In To Enforce Conditions Of Security And Sufficiency; The More It Regulates Wages, Provides Compulsory Insurance, Doctoring, Education, And In General Takes Over The Lives Of The Wage-earners, For The Benefit Of The Companies And Men Employing The Wage-earners, The More Is This Condition Of Semi-slavery Accentuated.

For One Thing, I Was No Longer Alone; A Man Is Never Alone With The Wind-and The Boat Made Three.

Physicians Of The Utmost Fame, Were Called At Once; But When They Came They Answered, As They Took Their Fees, 'there Is No Cure For This Disease.'

The Power Of The State Must Be Invoked For Restoring Economic Freedom Just As It Has Been Invoked For Destroying Economic Freedom.

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.

The Accursed Power Which Stands On Privilege( And Goes With Women, Champagne And Bridge) Broke - And Democracy Resumed Her Reign ( Which Goes With Bridge And Women And Champagne.

Be At The Pains Of Putting Down Every Single Item Of Expenditure Whatsoever Every Day Which Could Possibly Be Twisted Into A Professional Expense And Remember To Lump In All The Doubtfulls.

The Reformation Has Been Called In A Biting Epigram "a Rising Of The Rich Against The Poor."

When You Have Lost Your Inns, Drown Your Empty Selves, For You Will Have Lost The Last Of England.

Loss And Possession, Death And Life Are One, There Falls No Shadow Where There Shines No Sun.

Ownership By Delegation Is A Contradiction In Terms. When Men Say, For Instance (by A False Metaphor), That Each Member Of The Public Should Feel Himself An Owner Of Public Property-such As A Town Park-and Should Therefore Respect It As His Own, They Are Saying Something Which All Our Experience Proves To Be Completely False. No Man Feels Of Public Property That It Is His Own; No Man Will Treat It With The Care Of The Affection Of A Thing Which Is His Own.

These Are The Advantages Of Travel, That One Meets So Many Men Whom One Would Otherwise Never Meet, And That One Feeds As It Were Upon The Complexity Of Mankind

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.

The Worship Of The Nation Has Been Able To Make Men Tolerate Under Its Authority What They Could Never Have Tolerated From Princes: A Submission To Rule, Which, Through Sumptuary Laws On Food And Drink, Through Conscription, Through A Cast-iron System Of Compulsory Instruction For All On State Ordered Lines, And Through A State Examination At The Gate Of Every Profession, Has Almost Killed The Citizen's Power To React Upon That Which Controls Him, And Has Almost Destroyed That Variety Which Is The Mark Of Life.

Never Could An Increase Of Comfort Or Security Be A Sufficient Good To Be Bought At The Price Of Liberty.

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.

It Has Long Been Recognized By Public Men Of All Kinds. . . That Statistics Come Under The Head Of Lying, And That No Lie Is So False Or Inconclusive As That Which Is Based On Statistics.

But If We Are To Retain Freedom, Then We Can Only Do So By Keeping The Determining Mass Of The Citizens The Possessors Of Property With Personal Control Over It, As Individuals Or As Families. For Property Is The Necessary Condition Of Economic Freedom In The Full Sense Of That Term. He That Has Not Property Is Under Economic Servitude To Him Who Has Property, Whether The Possessor Of It Be Another Individual Or The State.

Ownership Is Not A General Feature Of Our Society, Determining Its Character. On The Contrary, Dependence On A Precarious Wage At The Will Of Others Is The General Feature Of Our Society.

The Restoration Of Property Would Be A Complicated, Arduous And Presumably A Lengthy Business; The Transformation Of A Capitalist Society Into A Communist One Needs Nothing But The Extension Of Existing Conditions.

Capitalism Had Arisen Through The Misuse And Exaggeration Of Certain Rights, Notably The Right Of Property - The Basis Of Economic Freedom - And The Right Of Contract, Which Is One Of The Main Functions Of Economic Freedom. Therefore, Even Under Capitalism, So Long As The Old Principles Were Remembered It Was Possible To Recall The Principles Whereby Society Had Once Been Sane And Well Ordered.

The World Is Full Of Double Beds And Most Delightful Maidenheads, Which Being So, There's No Excuse For Sodomy Or Self-abuse.

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.

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.

If Antiquity Be The Only Test Of Nobility, Then Cheese Is A Very Noble Thing ... The Lineage Of Cheese Is Demonstrably Beyond All Record.

Wherever The Catholic Sun Doth Shine, There’s Always Laughter And Good Red Wine. At Least I’ve Always Found It So. Benedicamus Domino!

There Is Already Something Like A Jewish Monopoly In High Finance... Here Is The Same Element Of Jewish Monopoly In The Silver Trade, And In The Control Of Various Other Metals, Notably Lead, Nickel, Quicksilver. What Is Most Disquieting Of All, This Tendency To Monopoly Is Spreading Like A Disease.

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.

In Soft Deluding Lies Let Fools Delight. A Shadow Marks Our Days, Which End In Night.

When I Am Dead, I Hope It May Be Said: His Sins Were Scarlet, But His Books Were Read.

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 Any One 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.

The Llama Is A Woolly Sort Of Fleecy Hairy Goat, With An Indolent Expression And An Undulating Throat; Like An Unsuccessful Literary Man.

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.

I Shoot The Hippopotamus With Bullets Made Of Platinum, Because If I Use The Leaden One His Hide Is Sure To Flatten Em.

I Always Like To Associate With A Lot Of Priests Because It Makes Me Understand Anti-clerical Things So Well.

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.

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.

Writing Itself Is A Bad Enough Trade, Rightly Held Up To Ridicule And Contempt By The Greater Part Of Mankind, And Especially By Those Who Do Real Work, Plowing, Riding, Sailing

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.

The Church Is A Perpetually Defeated Thing That Always Outlives Her Conquerers.

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.

It Is Sometimes Necessary To Lie Damnably In The Interests Of The Nation.

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.

And The Men That Were Boys When I Was A Boy Shall Sit And Drink With Me.

The Grace Of God Is Courtesy.

It Is Mind Which Determines The Change Of Society, And It Was Because The Mind At Work Was A Catholic Mind That The Slave Became A Serf And Was On His Way To Becoming A Peasant And A Fully Free Man-a Man Free Economically As Well As Politically. The Whole Spirit Of The Church Was For Small Property, And That Spirit Was Slowly, Instinctively, Working For The Establishment Of Small Property Throughout Christendom.

The Choice Lies Between Property On The One Hand And Slavery, Public Or Private, On The Other. There Is No Third Issue.

We May Not Say To The Poor: "you Have A Right To Fight The Rich Merely Because They Are Rich And In Order To Make Yourselves Less Poor." We May Say: "you Have A Right To Fight To Prevent The Conditions Of Your Life Becoming Inhuman," But We May Not Say, "you Have A Right To Fight Merely Because You Desire To Have More And Your Opponent To Have Less."

Even If The Wealth And Power Be Well Distributed Throughout A Community, Its Members Will Not Be Happy Unless They Are Inwardly So, And Obviously Where The Distribution Is Bad, Where The Few Have A Vast Superfluity And The Many Are Consumed By Anxiety Or Want, Or Where A Few Controllers Can Exercise Their Will Over The Many, Society Has Failed, Even Though Its Total Wealth And Power Be Increased.

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.

It Has Been Discovered That With A Dull Urban Population, All Formed Under A Mechanical System Of State Education, A Suggestion Or Command, However Senseless And Unreasoned, Will Be Obeyed If It Be Sufficiently Repeated.

Coupled With Usury, Unrestricted Competition Destroys The Small Man For The Profit Of The Great And In So Doing Produces That Mass Of Economically Unfree Citizens Whose Very Political Freedom Comes In Question Because It Has No Foundation In Any Economic Freedom, That Is, Any Useful Proportion Of Property To Support It. Political Freedom Without Economic Freedom Is Almost Worthless, And It Is Because The Modern Proletariat Has The One Kind Of Freedom Without The Other That Its Rebellion Is Now Threatening The Very Structure Of The Modern World.

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.

I'm Tired Of Love; I'm Still More Tired Of Rhyme; But Money Gives Me Pleasure All The Time.

Pale Ebenezer Thought It Wrong To Fight. But Roaring Bill, Who Killed Him, Thought It Right.

When One Remembers How The Catholic Church Has Been Governed, And By Whom, One Realizes That It Must Have Been Divinely Inspired To Have Survived At All.

All Men Have An Instinct For Conflict: At Least, All Healthy Men.

Write As The Wind Blows And Command All Words Like An Army!

But Though Usury Is In Itself Immoral, And Justly Condemned By Every Ethical Code, Its Chief And Worst Defect In The Particular Case We Are Now Examining, The Growth Of Capitalism And Its Increasing Proletariat, Is The Centralization Of Irresponsible Control Over The Lives Of Men: The Putting Power Over The Proletariat Into The Hands Of A Few Who Can Direct The Loans Of Currency And Credit Without Which That Proletariat Could Not Be Fed And Clothed And Maintained In Work.

Under The Old Philosophy Which Had Governed The High Middle Ages Things Had Been Everywhere Towards A Condition Of Society In Which Property Was Well Distributed Throughout The Community, And Thus The Family Rendered Independent.

When People Call This Beast To Mind, They Marvel More And More At Such A Little Tail Behind, So Large A Trunk Before.

Slowly But Certainly The Proletarian, By Every Political Reform Which Secures His Well-being Under New Rules Of Insurance, Of State Control In Education, Of State Medicine And The Rest, Is Developing Into The Slave, Leaving The Rich Man Apart And Free. All Industrial Civilization Is Clearly Moving Towards The Re-establishment Of The Servile State.

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]

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.

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.

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.

Of All Fatiguing, Futile, Empty Trades, The Worst, I Suppose, Is Writing About Writing.

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.

The Microbe Is So Very Small You Cannot Make Him Out At All, But Many Sanguine People Hope To See Him Through A Microscope.

[heresy Is] The Dislocation Of A Complete And Self-supporting Scheme By The Introduction Of A Novel Denial Of Some Essential Part Therein.

The Whole Art Of The Political Speech Is To Put 'nothing' Into It. It Is Much More Difficult Than It Sounds.

Child! Do Not Throw This Book About Refrain From The Unholy Pleasure Of Cutting All The Pictures Out! Preserve It As Your Chiefest Treasure.

The Rich Arrived In Pairs And Also In Rolls Royces; They Talked Of Their Affairs In Loud And Strident Voices... The Poor Arrived In Fords, Whose Features They Resembled; They Laughed To See So Many Lords And Ladies All Assembled. The People In Between Looked Underdone And Harassed, And Our Of Place And Mean, And Horribly Embarrassed.

Time After Time Mankind Is Driven Against The Rocks Of The Horrid Reality Of A Fallen Creation. And Time After Time Mankind Must Learn The Hard Lessons Of History-the Lessons That For Some Dangerous And Awful Reason We Can't Seem To Keep In Our Collective Memory.

Collective Memory

Statistics Are The Triumph Of The Quantitative Method, And The Quantitative Method Is The Victory Of Sterility And Death.

But If I Be Asked What Sign We May Look For To Show That The Advance Of The Faith Is At Hand I Would Answer By A Word The Modern World Has Forgotten: Persecution. When That Shall Once More Be At Work It Will Be Morning.

Is There No Latin Word For Tea? Upon My Soul, If I Had Known That I Would Have Let The Vulgar Stuff Alone.

Will Not Perhaps The Temporal Power Of Islam Return And With It The Menace Of An Armed Mohammedan World, Which Will Shake Off The Domination Of Europeans - Still Nominally Christian - And Reappear As The Prime Enemy Of Our Civilization? The Future Always Comes As A Surprise, But Political Wisdom Consists In Attempting At Least Some Partial Judgment Of What That Surprise May Be. And For My Part I Cannot But Believe That A Main Unexpected Thing Of The Future Is The Return Of Islam.

The Gentleman Is Generous And Treats All Men As His Equals, Especially Those Whom He Feels To Be Inferior In Rank And Wealth.

The Sea Drives Truth Into A Man Like Salt.

In The Same Way The Eminence Attaching To The Mere Possession Of Great Wealth Disappoints Us Nine Times Out Of Ten, Especially If The Wealth Has Been Accumulated Rapidly. For Great Wealth Is Accumulated Rapidly By Cunning Or Chance, Or A Mixture Of The Two. Cunning Has Nothing To Do With High Qualities; It Is Rather A Presumption Against Them; While Chance Has Nothing To Do With Them Either. Therefore It Is That Men Are Always Complaining After Meeting So-and-so, That He Seemed To Be Astonishingly Stupid, Though He Made A Million In Ten Years And Started As A Pauper.

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.

Just As There Is Nothing Between The Admirable Omelet And The Intolerable, So With Autobiography.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Any Subject Can Be Made Interesting, And Therefore Any Subject Can Be Made Boring.

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.

Economic Freedom Is In Our Eyes A Good. It Is Among The Highest Of Temporal Goods Because It Is Necessary To The Highest Life Of Society Through The Dignity Of Man And Through The Multiplicity Of His Action, In Which Multiplicity Is Life. Through Well-divided Property Alone Can The Units Of Society React Upon The State. Through It Alone Can A Public Opinion Flourish. Only Where The Bulk Of The Cells Are Healthy Can The Whole Organism Thrive.

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.

An Institute Run With Such Knavish Imbecility That If It Were Not The Work Of God It Would Not Last A Fortnight.

There Are Few Greater Temptations On Earth Than To Stay Permanently At Oxford In Meditation, And To Read All The Books In The Bodlean.

Wherever The Industrial System Has Reached Its Second Generation It Is Threatened By Two Mortal Perils. The First Is The Demand By An Organized Proletariat For Sustenance Without Relation To The Product Of Its Labor; A Demand Which Threatens The Very Existence Of Profit (on The Necessary Presumption Of Which Capitalism Reposes). The Second, And Immediately Graver Danger Is That Of A Revolt For The Confiscation Of The Means Of Production.

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.

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.

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.

For Every Time She Shouted "fire!" They Only Answered "little Liar!" And Therefore When Her Aunt Returned, Matilda, And The House, Were Burned.

Kings Live In Palaces, And Pigs In Sties, And Youth In Expectation. Youth Is Wise.

Money Gives Me Pleasure All The Time.

Funny Valentine

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.

Political Opinions

I Am Writing A Book About The Crusades So Dull That I Can Scarcely Write It.

Property, As A General Social Institution, Well-divided Property, Having Disappeared And Capitalism Having Taken Its Place, You Cannot Reverse The Process Without Acting Against Natural Economic Tendencies.

We Wander For Distraction, But We Travel For Fulfillment.

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.

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.

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.

How Slow The Shadow Creeps: But When 'tis Past How Fast The Shadows Fall. How Fast! How Fast!

The Moment A Man Talks To His Fellows He Begins To Lie.

[a]lways Keep A-hold Of Nurse For Fear Of Finding Something Worse

If We Do Not Restore The Institution Of Property We Cannot Escape Restoring The Institution Of Slavery; There Is No Third Course.

It Is The Best Of All Trades, To Make Songs, And The Second Best To Sing Them.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Under The Old Social Philosophy Which Had Governed The Middle Ages, Temporal, And Therefore All Economic, Activities Were Referred To An Eternal Standard. The Production Of Wealth, It Distribution And Exchange Were Regulated With A View To Securing The Christian Life Of Christian Men. In Two Points Especially Was This Felt: First In Securing The Independence Of The Family, Which Can Only Be Done By The Wide Distribution Of Property, In Others Words The Prevention Of The Growth Of A Proletariat; Secondly, In The Close Connection Between Wealth And Public Function.

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.

One Man In One Mood Will Attack Industrial Capitalism For Its Destruction Of Beauty; Another For Its Incompetence; Another For The Vileness Of The Men Who Chiefly Prosper Under It; Another For Its Mere Confusion And Noise; Another For Its False Values; It Was Until Recently Most Fiercely Attacked For Its Impoverishment Of The Workers, Its Margin Of Unemployment And The Rest - Indeed So Fiercely That It Was Compelled To Seek Palliatives For The Evil. With A Mass Of Men It Was Attacked From A Vague But Strong Sense Of Injustice; It Allowed A Few Rich To Exploit Mankind.

Oh, My Friends, Be Warned By Me, That Breakfast, Dinner, Lunch And Tea, Are All Human Frame Requires.

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.

Whatever Happens, We Have Got The Maxim Gun, And They Have Not.

Whatever Happens

Political Freedom Without Economic Freedom Is Almost Worthless, And It Is Because The Modern Proletariat Has The One Kind Of Freedom Without The Other That Its Rebellion Is Now Threatening The Very Structure Of The Modern World.

In The Midst Of All These Innumerable Forms Of A Common Protest And Universal Ill-ease There Has Grown Up One Definite Body Of Doctrine Whose Adherents Are Called Communists And Who Desired The Total Subversion Of What Had Been, Hitherto Unquestioned Among Civilized European Men, The General Doctrines Of Property And Individual Freedom.

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.

But Scientists, Who Ought To Know Assure Us That It Must Be So. Oh, Let Us Never, Never Doubt What Nobody Is Sure About.

... But As A Godless Greed Pursued Its Career From Excess To Excess, It Provoked A Sort Of Twin Hostile Brother, Equally Godless, Born In The Same Atmosphere Of Utter Disregard For The Foundational Virtues Of Humility And Charity. This Hostile Twin Brother Of Capitalism Was Destined To Be Called Communism, And Is Today Setting Out To Murder Its Elder.

I Forget The Name Of The Place; I Forget The Name Of The Girl; But The Wine Was Chambertin.

When The Mass Of Men Are Dispossessed - Own Nothing - They Become Wholly Dependent Upon The Owners; And When Those Owners Are In Active Competition To Lower The Cost Of Production The Mass Of Men Whom They Exploit Not Only Lack The Power To Order Their Own Lives, But Suffer From Want And Insecurity As Well.

I Said To Heart, "how Goes It?" Heart Replied: "right As A Ribstone Pippin!" But It Lied.

Before The Curse Of Statistics Fell Upon Mankind We Lived A Happy, Innocent Life, Full Of Merriment And Go And Informed By Fairly Good Judgment.

Be Content To Remember That Those Who Can Make Omelettes Properly Can Do Nothing Else.

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.

I Am A Catholic. As Far As Possible, I Go To Mass Every Day. This Is A Rosary. As Far As Possible, I Kneel Down And Tell These Beads Every Day. If You Reject Me On Account Of My Religion, I Shall Thank God That He Has Spared Me The Indignity Of Being Your Representative.

Oh, You Should Never, Never Doubt What Nobody Is Sure About.

Remote And Ineffectual Don.

The Control Of The Production Of Wealth Is The Control Of Human Life Itself.

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