British-French writer & historian (1870-1953)
If antiquity be the test of nobility, as many affirm and none deny ... then cheese is a very noble thing.
HILAIRE BELLOC
First and Last
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
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
The Cruise of the 'Nona'
Is there no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have left the vulgar stuff alone.
HILAIRE BELLOC
"On Tea", On Nothing and Kindred Subjects
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
attributed, The Life of Hilaire Belloc
Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
There's always laughter and good red wine.
At least I've always found it so.
Benedicamus Domino!
HILAIRE BELLOC
"The Catholic Sun"
Romance it is undoubtedly who whispers to every man that life is not a blind and aimless business, not all a hopeless waste and confusion; and that his existence is a pageant (appreciatively observed by divine spectators), and that he is strong and excellent and wise: and to romance he listens, willing and thrice willing to be cheated by the honeyed fiction.
HILAIRE BELLOC
Modern Essays
Your life is like a little winter's day
Whose sad sun rises late to set too soon;
You have just come--why will you go away,
Making an evening of what should be noon.
HILAIRE BELLOC
Sonnets
Write as the wind blows and command all words like an army!
HILAIRE BELLOC
The Path to Rome
When I am dead, I hope it may be said:
'His sins were scarlet, But his books were read.'
HILAIRE BELLOC
"On His Books"
It was my shame, and now it is my boast,
That I have loved you rather more than most.
HILAIRE BELLOC
"Time Cures All"
Professional politics is a trade in which the sly outweigh the wise.
HILAIRE BELLOC
The Cruise of the 'Nona'
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."
HILAIRE BELLOC
"Henry King, Who Chewed Bits of String, and Was Early Cut off in Dreadful Agonies", Cautionary Tales for Children
You must have read in stories of people who get to Fairyland, and I think you will notice that in the stories written by people who know anything about it (and you know how easily these are distinguished from the others) there are always two ways of getting to Fairyland, and only two: one is by mistake, and the other is by a spell. In the first way to Fairyland is to lose your way, and this is one of the best ways of getting there; but it is dangerous, because if you get there that way you offend the fairies. It is better to get there by a spell. But the inconvenience of that is that you are blindfolded so as not to be allowed to remember the way there or back again. When you get there by a spell, one of the people from Fairyland takes you in charge. They prefer to do it when you are asleep, but they are quite game to do it at other times if they think it worth their while.
HILAIRE BELLOC
"The Way to Fairyland", On Something
Just as there is nothing between the admirable omelette and the intolerable, so with autobiography.
HILAIRE BELLOC
A Conversation and a Cat
In words lie the seeds of all dissension, and love at its most profound is silent.
HILAIRE BELLOC
A Conversation with a Cat and Others
The future always comes as a surprise, but political wisdom consists in attempting at least some partial judgment of what that surprise may be.
HILAIRE BELLOC
The Great Heresies
Nor have I met any man in my life, arguing for what should be among men, but took for granted as he argued that the doctrine he consciously or unconsciously accepted was or should be a similar foundation for all mankind. Hence battle.
HILAIRE BELLOC
The Cruise of the 'Nona'
The Barbarian hopes -- and that is the very mark of him -- that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilisation has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort but he will not be at pains to replace such goods nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being.
HILAIRE BELLOC
This and That and the Other
If we do not restore the Institution of Property we cannot escape restoring the Institution of Slavery; there is no third course.
HILAIRE BELLOC
The Servile State