1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. Hilaire Belloc

Hilaire Belloc Quotes
page 2

Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc was a British-French writer and historian and one of the most prolific writers in England during the early twentieth century. Belloc was also an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, writer of letters, soldier, and political activist. His Catholic faith had a strong impact on his works. He was President of the Oxford Union and later MP for Salford from 1906 to 1910. He was a noted disputant, with a number of long-running feuds, but also widely regarded as a humane and sympathetic man. Belloc became a naturalised British subject in 1902 while retaining his French citizenship.

His writings encompassed religious poetry and comic verse for children. His widely sold Cautionary Tales for Children included "Jim, who ran away from his nurse, and was eaten by a lion" and "Matilda, who told lies and was burned to death". He also collaborated with G. K. Chesterton on a number of works. Wikipedia  

✵ 27. July 1870 – 16. July 1953   •   Other names Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc, هیلیر بلاک
Hilaire Belloc photo
Hilaire Belloc: 91   quotes 8   likes

Hilaire Belloc Quotes

“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)

World , Night

“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)

Love , Money , Pleasure , Time

“[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)

Youth

“Death […] people nowadays seem to regard as something odd, whereas it is well known to be the commonest thing in the world.”

Hilaire Belloc

Source: The Path to Rome (1902), p. 258

Death , People , World

“The Microbe is so very small
You cannot make him out at all,
But many sanguine people hope
To see him through a microscope.”

Hilaire Belloc

"The Microbe"
More Beasts for Worse Children (1897)

People , Hope

“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.”

Hilaire Belloc

"On Torture: A Public Singer"
Sonnets and Verse (1938)

Singing

“You shall receive me when the clouds are high
With evening and the sheep attain the fold.
This is the faith that I have held and hold,
And this is that in which I mean to die.”

Hilaire Belloc

"Ballade to Our Lady of Czestochowa"
Hilaire Belloc (1925)

Faith

“I have noticed that this kind of fanatic, like every other kind, is in two species: the species which too clearly thinks out its own insane theory, and the species which remains perfectly muddle-headed.”

Hilaire Belloc

Source: The Cruise of the 'Nona (1925), p. 83

Thinking

“Then he added, as men will who are of infinite imagination and crammed with desires, 'My wants are few.”

Hilaire Belloc

Source: The Four Men: A Farrago (1911), p. 78

Men , Imagination

“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.”

Hilaire Belloc

Quoted by: Philip Jenkins, God's Continent / Christianity, Islam And Europe's Religious Crisis https://books.google.nl/books?id=IilDVBzWiGAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22God%27s+Continent+/+Christianity,+Islam+And+Europe%27s+Religious+Crisis%22&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiTy-arla3MAhVCQBoKHWTlAToQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22And%20for%20my%20part%20I%20cannot%20but%20believe%22&f=false, 2007, p.3
Source: The Great Heresies (1938), Chapter III

Wisdom , Future , Parting

“By thee do seers the inward light discern;
By thee the statue lives, the Gods return.”

Hilaire Belloc

Heroic Poem in Praise of Wine (1932)

God , Light

“The Llama is a wooly sort of fleecy hairy goat,
With an indolent expression and an undulating throat
Like an unsuccessful literary man.”

Hilaire Belloc

"The Llama"
More Beasts for Worse Children (1897)

“It is not insignificant that the Church, in the rare places and times when she had power to do so, did not compel the mind. During all that intense intellectual life of the thirteenth century instruction was by choice: endowed—so that the poorest could reach the highest inspiration, but at the choice of the individual or family will, to be taken or left.”

Hilaire Belloc

Source: Survivals and New Arrivals (1929), Ch. IV The Main Opposition (iii) The "Modern" Mind

Life , Family , Time

“Logically the Neo-Pagan should get rid of the institution of marriage altogether; but the very nature of human society, which is built up of cells each of which is a family, and the very nature of human generation, forbid such an extreme. Children must be brought up and acknowledged and sheltered, and the very nature of human affection, whereby there is the bond of affection between the parent and the child, and the child is not of one parent but of both, will compel the Neo-Pagan to modify what might be his logical conclusion of free love and support some simulacrum of the institution of marriage.”

Hilaire Belloc

Source: Survivals and New Arrivals (1929), Ch. V New Arrivals

Love , Marriage , Children , Family

“Write as the wind blows and command all words like an army!”

Hilaire Belloc

Source: The Path to Rome (1902), p. xi

“Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight,
But Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right.”

Hilaire Belloc

"The Pacifist"
Sonnets and Verse (1938)

Fight

“It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them.”

Hilaire Belloc

"On Song", On Everything (1909)

Singing

“The world is full of double beds
And most delightful maidenheads,
Which being so, there’s no excuse
For sodomy or self-abuse.”

Hilaire Belloc

"The world is full of double beds"

World

“I said to Heart, "How goes it?" Heart replied:
"Right as a Ribstone Pippin!"”

Hilaire Belloc

But it lied.
"The False Heart"
Verses (1910)

Heart