Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc (July 27, 1870 - July 1953) was an Anglo-French writer and historian who became a naturalized British subject in 1902, but kept his French citizenship. He was one of the most prolific writers in England during the early twentieth century. He was known as a writer, orator, poet, sailor, satirist, man of letters, soldier and political activist. He is most notable for his Catholic faith, which had a strong impact on his works, and his writing collaboration with G.K. Chesterton (Chesterton quotes; Chesterton biography). 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.
His most lasting legacy is probably his verse, which encompasses cautionary tales and religious poetry. Among his best-remembered poems re "Jim, who ran away from his nurse, and was eaten by a lion" and "Matilda, who told lies and was burnt to death".
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All men have an instinct for conflict: at least, all healthy men.
Any subject can be made interesting, and therefore any subject can be made boring.
Be content to remember that those who can make omelettes properly can do nothing else.
Do not, I beseech you, be troubled about the increase of forces already in dissolution. You have mistaken the hour of the night; it is already morning.
I am writing a book about the Crusades so dull that I can scarcely write it.
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.
I'm tired of Love; I'm still more tired of Rhyme.
But money gives me
pleasure all the time.
If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God that He has spared me the indignity of being your representative.
It is sometimes necessary to lie damnably in the interests of the nation.
It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them.
Kings live in Palaces, and Pigs in sties,
And youth in Expectation.
Youth is wise.
Loss and Possession, Death and Life are one.
There falls no shadow
where there shines no sun.
Nothing is worthwhile on this unhappy earth except the fulfilment of a man's desire.
Of all fatiguing, futile, empty trades, the worst, I suppose, is writing about writing.
Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death.
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.
The Church is a perpetually defeated thing that always outlives her conquerers.
The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself.
The grace of God is courtesy.
The moment a man talks to his fellows he begins to lie.
The prospect of refreshment at the charges of another is an opportunity never to be neglected by men of clear commercial judgment.
There's nothing worth the wear of winning,
But laughter and the love
of friends.
They murmured as they took their fees,
"There is no cure for this
disease."
When I am dead, I hope it may be said:
'His sins were scarlet, But
his books were read'.
Write as the wind blows and command all words like an army!
Categories: G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, Quotes of the day
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