Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953,) fully Joseph-Hilaire-Pierre-René Belloc, was a French-born British poet, historian, essayist, and novelist. He was also a versatile writer of satirical novels, biographies, historical works, and travel writing. He was the brother of the novelist and playwright Marie Belloc Lowndes (1868–1947.)
Belloc was born of mixed French and English descent in La Celle-Saint-Cloud, near Versailles, France. His family moved to England during the Franco-Prussian War and settled there in 1872. He was educated under Cardinal John Henry Newman at the Oratory School, Birmingham, and Balliol College, Oxford, but did military service in the French artillery. He became a naturalized British subject (1902) and a Liberal-party Member of Parliament for South Salford (1906–10.)
Throughout his literary career, Belloc was concerned with the problems of social reform. He disapproved of modern industrial society and socialism. In The Servile State (1912,) he advocated a return to the system of medieval guilds. He was a close friend of G. K. Chesterton, who illustrated many of Belloc’s books.
Belloc is most remembered for his light verse, particularly for children—The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts (1896) and The Cautionary Tales (1907.) His numerous travel books include The Path to Rome (1902) and The Old Road (1910.) Belloc also wrote several historical studies, including Robespierre (1901,) The French Revolution (1924,) A History of England (1925–27,) and Lives of Joan of Arc (1929,) Richelieu (1929,) Napoleon (1932,) Cromwell (1934,) and Milton (1935.)
Belloc was a zealous Roman Catholic apologist. His religious books include Europe and the Faith (1920) and The Great Heresies (1938.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Hilaire Belloc
I’m tired of Love: I’m still more tired of Rhyme.
But Money gives me pleasure all the time.
—Hilaire Belloc
Topics: Money
The worst sort of hypocrite and liar is the man who lies to himself in order to feel at ease.
—Hilaire Belloc
Topics: Hypocrisy
Loss and possession, Death and life are one. There falls no shadow where There shines no sun.
—Hilaire Belloc
Topics: Dying, Death
Just as there is nothing between the admirable omelet and the intolerable, so with autobiography.
—Hilaire Belloc
Topics: Legacy, Autobiography, Biography
When I am dead, I hope it may be said: “His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.”
—Hilaire Belloc
Topics: Authors & Writing
Never could an increase of comfort or security be a sufficient good to be bought at the price of liberty.
—Hilaire Belloc
Topics: Welfare
All men have an instinct for conflict: at least, all healthy men.
—Hilaire Belloc
Topics: Conflict
The microbe is so very small: You cannot take him out at all.
—Hilaire Belloc
Topics: Scientists, Science
Be at the pains of putting down every single item of expenditure whatsoever every day which could possibly be twisted into a professional expense and remember to lump in all the doubtfuls.
—Hilaire Belloc
Topics: Shopping
When friendship disappears then there is a space left open to that awful loneliness of the outside world which is like the cold space between the planets. It is an air in which men perish utterly.
—Hilaire Belloc
Topics: Friends, Friendship, Space
From quiet homes and first beginning,
Out to the undiscovered ends,
There’s nothing worth the winning,
But laughter and the love of friends.
—Hilaire Belloc
Topics: Winning, Friendship, Friends and Friendship, Laughter
It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them.
—Hilaire Belloc
Topics: Singing
To walk because it is good for you warps the sould, just as it warps the soul for a man to talk for hire or because he think it his duty.
—Hilaire Belloc
Topics: Walking
Great artistic talent in any direction… is hardly inherent to the man. It comes and goes; it is often possessed only for a short phase in his life; it hardly ever colors his character as a whole and has nothing to do with the moral and intellectual stuff of the mind and soul. Many great artists, perhaps most great artists, have been poor fellows indeed, whom to know was to despise.
—Hilaire Belloc
Topics: The Artist
The Rich arrived in pairs
And also in Rolls Royces;
They talked of their affairs
In loud and strident voices…
The Poor arrived in Fords,
Whose features they resembled;
They laughed to see so many Lords
And Ladies all assembled.
The People in Between
Looked underdone and harassed,
And our of place and mean,
And Horribly embarrassed.
—Hilaire Belloc
Topics: Wealth
Is there no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have let the vulgar stuff alone.
—Hilaire Belloc
The moment a man talks to his fellows he begins to lie.
—Hilaire Belloc
Topics: Conversation
I shoot the Hippopotamus
With bullets made of platinum,
Because if I use leaden ones
His hide is sure to flatten ’em.
—Hilaire Belloc
Topics: Hunting, Animals
Remote and ineffectual don.
—Hilaire Belloc
Topics: Colleges, Education, Universities
Child! Do not throw this book about;
Refrain from the unholy pleasure
Of cutting all the pictures out!
Preserve it as your chiefest treasure.
—Hilaire Belloc
Topics: Books
Writing itself is a bad enough trade, rightly held up to ridicule and contempt by the greater part of mankind, and especially by those who do real work, plowing, riding, sailing
—Hilaire Belloc
Topics: Authors & Writing
It is sometimes necessary to lie damnably in the interests of the nation.
—Hilaire Belloc
Topics: Lying, Lies, Deception/Lying
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.
—Hilaire Belloc
Topics: Travel
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