Hilaire Belloc: Quotes about love

“There's nothing worth the wear of winning,
But laughter and the love of friends.”

Hilaire Belloc

"Dedicatory Ode", stanza 22
Verses (1910)
Context: 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.

Love , Laughter

“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.”

Hilaire Belloc

Love

“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

"Dedicatory Ode", stanza 22
Verses (1910)

Love , Home , Laughter

“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.”

Hilaire Belloc

"Dedicatory Ode", stanzas 31–32
Verses (1910)

Love , Water , Heart

“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

“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

Love , Men , Youth , Beauty

“It was my shame, and now it is my boast,
That I have loved you rather more than most.”

Hilaire Belloc

"Time Cures All"

Love

“Then let us love one another and laugh. Time passes, and we shall soon laugh no longer—and meanwhile common living is a burden, and earnest men are in siege upon us all around. Let us suffer absurdities, for this is only to suffer one another.”

Hilaire Belloc

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

Love , Men , Suffering , 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

“There is nothing at all that remains: nor any house; nor any castle, however strong; nor any love, however tender and sound; nor any comradeship among men, however hardy. Nothing remains but the things of which I will not speak, because we have spoken enough of them already during these four days. But I who am old will give you advice, which is this—to consider chiefly from now onwards those permanent things which are, as it were, the shores of this age and the harbours of our glittering and pleasant but dangerous and wholly changeful sea.”

Hilaire Belloc

By this, we are then told, "he meant Death." (p. 158)
Source: The Four Men: A Farrago (1911), pp. 157–8

Love , Men , Age , Strong