Hilaire Belloc: 89 books

Excerpt: "The Scorpion is as black as soot, He dearly loves to bite; He is a most unpleasant brute To find in bed, at night."

On Weighing Anchor Personally I should call it "Getting It up," but I have always seen it in print called "weighing anchor"--and if it is in print one must bow to it. It does weigh. There are many ways of doing it. The best, like all good things, has gone for ever, and this best way was for a thing called...

Louis XIV. succeeding to a cautious and constructive period in the national life of France, this in its turn succeeding to the long impotence of the religious wars, found at his orders when his long minority was ended a society not only eager and united, but beginning also to give forth the fruit due...

This book, of average length, is set at the end of the sixteenth century, when the English were in a state of war against the Spanish. The heroes of the story are two boys from Devon, a county in the south-west of England. They set off with a view to repairing the fortunes of the family of one of them,...

In the days of Abd-er-Rahman, who was among the wisest and most glorious of the Commanders of the Faithful, there resided in the City of Bagdad an elderly merchant of such enormous wealth that his lightest expressions of opinion caused the markets of the Euphrates to fluctuate in the most alarming manner....

SCENA PRIMA. EMMA e FABRIZIO. EMMA siede davanti al caminetto, pensosa. FABRIZIO entra dallo studio, si guarda attorno, viene non avvertito fin dietro di lei, le prende la testa fra le mani, la rovescia verso di sè e la bacia sulla bocca. EMMA. Mi fai morire

During a late election Lord Roehampton strained a vocal chord From shouting, very loud and high, To lots and lots of people why The Budget in his own opin- -Ion should not be allowed to win. He sought a Specialist, who said: "You have a swelling in the head: Your Larynx is a thought relaxed And you are...

There were once two men. They were men of might and breeding. They were young, they were intolerant, they were hale. Were there for humans as there is for dogs a tribunal to determine excellence; were there judges of anthropoidal points and juries to, give prizes for manly race, vigour, and the rest,...

The plain man sees that the drama of his time has gradually passed from one phase to another of complexity in thought coupled with simplicity of incident, and it occurs to him that just one further step is needed to make something final in British art. We seem to be just on the threshold of something...

It is an interesting speculation by what means the Book lost its old position in this country. This is not only an interesting speculation, but one which nearly concerns a vital matter. For if men fall into the habit of neglecting true books in an old and traditional civilization, the inaccuracy of their judgments and the illusions to which they will be subject, must increase.

England has been built up upon the framework of her rivers, and, in that pattern, the principal line has been the line of the Thames. Partly because it was the main highway of Southern England, partly because it looked eastward towards the Continent from which the national life has been drawn, partly...

Excerpt: "It was incredible to him that a Sentient Being who perpetually accumulated experience, who grew riper and riper, more and more full of such knowledge as was native to himself and complementary to his nature, should at the very crisis of his success in all things intellectual and emotional, cease suddenly."

The object of these few pages is not to recount once more the history of the Revolution: that can be followed in any one of a hundred text-books. Their object is rather to lay, if that be possible, an explanation of it before the English reader; so that he may understand both what it was and how it proceeded,...

Excerpt: "One day I met a man who was sitting quite silent near Whitney, in the Thames Valley, in a very large, long, low inn that stands in those parts, or at least stood then, for whether it stands now or not depends upon the Fussyites, whose business it is to Fuss, and in their Fussing to disturb mankind."