Hilaire Belloc

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

Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc (27 July 1870 – 16 July 1953) was a British writer and poet, known chiefly for his essays and children's books; he was sometimes referred to by the nickname "Old Thunder".

Sourced

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

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.

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

Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death.

• [M]others of large families (who claim to common sense)
  Will find a Tiger well repay the trouble and expense.
  • "The Tiger", The Bad Child's Book of Beasts (1896)

• I shoot the Hippopotamus
  With bullets made of platinum,
  Because if I use leaden ones
  His hide is sure to flatten 'em.
  • "The Hippopotamus", The Bad Child's Book of Beasts (1896)

• What! Would you slap the Porcupine?
  Unhappy child — desist!
  Alas! That any friend of mine
  Should turn Tupto-philist.
  • "The Porcupine", More Beasts for Worse Children (1897)

• The Llama is a wooly sort of fleecy hairy goat,
  With an indolent expression and an undulating throat
  Like an unsuccessful literary man.
  • "The Llama", More Beasts for Worse Children (1897)

• The Microbe is so very small
  You cannot make him out at all,
  But many sanguine people hope
  To see him through a microscope.
  • "The Microbe", More Beasts for Worse Children (1897)

• Oh! let us never, never doubt
  What nobody is sure about!
  • "The Microbe", More Beasts for Worse Children (1897)

• Whatever happens, we have got
  The Maxim gun, and they have not.
  • The Modern Traveller (1898)

• Write as the wind blows and command all words like an army!
  • The Path to Rome (1902)

• [A]lways keep a-hold of Nurse
  For fear of finding something worse
  • "Jim, Who Ran Away From His Nurse, and Was Eaten by a Lion", Cautionary Tales for Children (1907)

• 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."
  • "Henry King, Who Chewed Bits of String, and Was Early Cut off in Dreadful Agonies", Cautionary Tales for Children (1907)

• Oh, my friends, be warned by me,
  That Breakfast, Dinner, Lunch, and Tea
  Are all the Human Frame requires.
  • "Henry King, Who Chewed Bits of String, and Was Early Cut off in Dreadful Agonies", Cautionary Tales for Children (1907)

• It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them.
  • "On Song", On Everything (1909)

• 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.
  • "Courtesy", Verses (1910)

• 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.
  • "Dedicatory Ode", Verses (1910)

• Child! Do not throw this book about;
  Refrain from the unholy pleasure
  Of cutting all the pictures out!
  Preserve it as your chiefest treasure.
  • "Dedication on the Gift of a Book to a Child", Verses (1910)

• Now the faith is old and the Devil bold
  Exceedingly bold indeed.
  And the masses of doubt that are floating about
  Would smother a mortal creed.
  But we that sit in a sturdy youth
  And still can drink strong ale
  Let us put it away to infallible truth
  That always shall prevail.
  And thank the Lord
  For the temporal sword
  And howling heretics too.
  And all good things
  Our Christendom brings
  But especially barley brew!
  • The Pelagian Drinking Song from The Four Men (1911)

• May all my enemies go to hell,
  Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel.
  • Drinking Song from The Four Men (1911)

• It is sometimes necessary to lie damnably in the interests of the nation.
  • Letter to G.K. Chesterton (12 December 1917)

• I'm tired of Love; I'm still more tired of Rhyme.
  But money gives me pleasure all the time.
  • "Fatigued", Sonnets and Verse (1923)

• In soft deluding lies let fools delight.
  A shadow marks our days, which end in Night.
  • "On a Sundial", Sonnets and Verse [Enlarged edition] (1938)

• How slow the Shadow creeps: but when 'tis past,
  How fast the Shadows fall. How fast! How fast!
  • "On a Sundial II", Sonnets and Verse (1938)

• Loss and Possession, Death and Life are one.
  There falls no shadow where there shines no sun.
  • "On a Sundial III", Sonnets and Verse (1938)
  • Quoted by the Kevin Smith character in the film Catch and Release (2006)

• All men have an instinct for conflict: at least, all healthy men.
  • The Silence of the Sea (1940)

• Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death.
  • The Silence of the Sea (1940)

• The moment a man talks to his fellows he begins to lie.
  • The Silence of the Sea (1940)

• Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
  There’s always laughter and good red wine.
  At least I’ve always found it so.
  Benedicamus Domino!
  • "The Catholic Sun"

• 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.
  • As quoted in Lifetime Speaker's Encyclopedia (1962) edited by Jacob Morton Braude, p. 829
  • Variant: I have wandered all my life, and I have traveled; the difference between the two is this — we wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.
    • As quoted in Traveling for Her: An Inspirational Guide (2008) by Amber Israelsen, p. 2

• When I am dead, I hope it may be said:
  'His sins were scarlet, But his books were read'.
  • "On His Books"

• The accursed power which stands on Privilege
  (And goes with Women, and Champagne and Bridge)
  Broke — and Democracy resumed her reign:
  (Which goes with Bridge, and Women and Champagne).
  • "On a Great Election"

• 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.
  • "Epitaph on the Politician Himself"

• Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight,
  But Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right.
  • "The Pacifist"

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

• 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.
  • "On Torture: A Public Singer"

• It was my shame, and now it is my boast,
  That I have loved you rather more than most.
  • "Time Cures All"

• A lovely river, all alone,
  She lingers in the hills and holds
  A hundred little towns of stone,
  Forgotten in the western wolds.
  • "The Evenlode"

• 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.
  • "Ballade to Our Lady of Czestochowa"

• Of three in One and One in three
  My narrow mind would doubting be
  Till Beauty, Grace and Kindness met
  And all at once were Juliet.
  • "A Trinity"

• How did the party go in Portman Square?
  I cannot tell you; Juliet was not there.
  And how did Lady Gaster's party go?
  Juliet was next me and I do not know.
  • "Juliet"

• That I grow sour, who only lack delight;
  That I descend to sneer, who only grieve;
  That from my depth I should
  condemn your height,
  That with my blame my mockery you receive—
  Huntress and splendor of the woodland night—
  Diana of this world, do not believe.
  • Verse written for Lady Diana Cooper

• Kings live in Palaces, and Pigs in sties,
  And youth in Expectation. Youth is wise.
  • "Kings live in Palaces, and Pigs in sties"

The Four Men: A Farrago (1911)

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984 (Twentieth-Century Classics)

• [N]othing is worthwhile on this unhappy earth except the fulfilment of a man's desire.
  • p. 4

• [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.
  • pp. 31–2
  • 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)

• Then he added, as men will who are of infinite imagination and crammed with desires, 'My wants are few.'
  • p. 78

• 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.
  • pp. 157–8
  • By this, we are then told, "he meant Death." (p. 158)

• 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 lomger possessed.
  • p. 159

• 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.
  • p. 160

An Heroic Poem in Praise of Wine (1932)

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

• To exalt, enthrone, establish and defend,
  To welcome home mankind's mysterious friend
  Wine, true begetter of all arts that be;
  Wine, privilege of the completely free;
  Wine the recorder; wine the sagely strong;
  Wine, bright avenger of sly-dealing wrong,
  Awake, Ausonian Muse, and sing the vineyard song!

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

• When the ephemeral vision's lure is past
  All, all, must face their Passion at the last.

• So touch my dying lip: so bridge that deep:
  So pledge my waking from the gift of sleep,
  And, sacramental, raise me the Divine:
  Strong brother in God and last companion, Wine.

External links

• Links to online texts by Belloc at the Online Books Page (University of Pennsylvania)
• Poems of Belloc