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Hilaire Belloc: 182 quotes8 likes

“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.”

Hilaire Belloc

Remark (undated) to William Temple, quoted in Robert Speaight, The Life of Hilaire Belloc (London: Hollis & Carter, 1957), p. 383

“[M]an knows his own nature, and that which he pursues must surely be his satisfaction? Judging by which measure I determine that the best thing in the world is flying at full speed from pursuit, and keeping up hammer and thud and gasp and bleeding till the knees fail and the head grows dizzy, and at last we all fall down and that thing (whatever it is) which pursues us catches us up and eats our carcasses. This way of managing our lives, I think, must be the best thing in the world—for nearly all men choose to live thus.”

Hilaire Belloc

The "thing" which pursues us, we subsequently learn, is either "a Money-Devil" or "some appetite or lust" and "the advice is given to all in youth that they must make up their minds which of the two sorts of exercise they would choose, and the first [i.e. pursuit by a Money-Devil] is commonly praised and thought worthy; the second blamed." (p. 32)
Source: The Four Men: A Farrago (1911), pp. 31–2

“Any subject can be made interesting, and therefore any subject can be made boring.”

Hilaire Belloc

XIII. A Guide to Boring
A Conversation with a Cat, and Others (1931)

“It is this worth, that is, this ability to get other wealth in exchange, which constitutes true Economic Wealth.”

Hilaire Belloc

Source: Economics for Helen (1924), Ch. 1 : What is Wealth?

“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.”

Hilaire Belloc

Source: The Four Men: A Farrago (1911), p. 160

“In soft deluding lies let fools delight.
A shadow marks our days, which end in Night.”

Hilaire Belloc

"On a Sundial"
Sonnets and Verse (1938)

“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.”

Hilaire Belloc

"Sonnet: Do not believe when lovely lips report"
To Lady Diana Cooper. See her memoir, The Light of Common Day (Boston: Houghton, 1959), pp. 27–28
Sonnets and Verse (1938)

“I'm tired of Love; I'm still more tired of Rhyme.
But money gives me pleasure all the time.”

Hilaire Belloc

"Fatigued", Sonnets and Verse (1923)

“[N]othing is worthwhile on this unhappy earth except the fulfilment of a man's desire.”

Hilaire Belloc

Source: The Four Men: A Farrago (1911), p. 4

“Kings live in Palaces, and Pigs in sties,
And youth in Expectation. Youth is wise.”

Hilaire Belloc

"Habitations"
Sonnets and Verse (1938)

“I recognised that I was (and I confessed) in that attitude of the mind wherein men admit mortality; something had already passed from me—I mean that fresh and vigorous morning of the eyes wherein the beauty of this land had been reflected as in a tiny mirror of burnished silver. Youth was gone out apart; it was loved and regretted, and therefore no longer possessed.”

Hilaire Belloc

Source: The Four Men: A Farrago (1911), p. 159