Quote Of The Day By Hilaire Belloc: 'There's Nothing Worth The Wear Of Winning, But...'

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Although he may be less familiar today, Hilaire Belloc was a larger-than-life literary persona at the turn of the 20th century. His eclectic writings encompassed history, religion, and economics, as well as poetry, like the darkly humorous "Cautionary Tales for Children." Hilaire was born in France in 1870, and his mom, Bessie Rayner Belloc, was an English writer. After his dad died when Hilaire was a toddler, his family (including Hilaire's older sister Marie Belloc Lowndes) moved to the U.K. 

Bessie was well-connected with other authors, particularly George Eliot, and as a child, Hilaire got to meet Eliot before she died in 1880. Surprisingly, Bessie and Eliot's tight bond was the catalyst for Hilaire's romance with Elodie Hogan. Through her Eliot fandom, Elodie became friends with Bessie before she and Hilaire fell in love. They couldn't get married until six years later. During the years between, Hilaire served in the French army and attended Oxford University, where he studied history, graduating in 1895. When Hilaire died in 1953, just 11 days before his 83rd birthday, he'd written over 150 books.

Hilaire's university experiences were crucial years in terms of building friendships and discovering his love of debating complex topics. "His immense personal magnetism, his cascade of ideas, of talk, of fervid oratory, his exuberant and irreverent humor, his love of bodily activity and adventure, carried all before them," declared E.C. Bentley, one of Hilaire's classmates, according to Joseph Pearce's Hilaire Belloc biography "Old Thunder." Throughout his life, Hilaire clearly knew how to cultivate strong friendships, which brings us to today's quote of the day.

"There's nothing worth the wear of winning, / But laughter and the love of friends," Hilaire Belloc wrote in the 1910 poem "Dedicatory Ode," which was a look back to Belloc's college days 15 years earlier. These lines appear just a little over halfway through the lengthy poem, in stanza 22.

Throughout this poem, Belloc recounts various college experiences with his friends, including hanging out in the university library and exploring the neighboring countryside together. This quote ties all those separate images into one powerful thesis: that joy in human connection is the most important thing in life.

However, even though Belloc was approaching middle age when he wrote this poem, he doesn't get mired down in nostalgic longing. Between the musicality of the poem's ABAB rhyme scheme and Belloc's tongue-in-cheek humor, his light, whimsical tone helps strengthen the quote's meaning.

After declaring "laughter and the love of friends" as the crucial thing to strive for in life in his poem "Dedicatory Ode," Hilaire Belloc also acknowledges that life sometimes doesn't go according to plan. When Belloc was disappointed after he failed to garner a post-graduate fellowship, for instance, he stayed in Oxford and focused on building friendships. In 1900, after he moved from Oxford, Belloc's charismatic style paved the way for his friendship with fellow writer G.K. Chesterton. The two men delighted in intellectual discussions and had a mutual appreciation for each other's literary skills. 

" ... those who loved him, went on loving him," A.N. Wilson said in the biography "Hilaire Belloc." "He made his friends laugh until they ached. He was ebulliently well-informed, spontaneously hilarious, mischievous and, at the same time, tough." Even though this description makes it sound like friendships were effortless for Belloc, he was also willing to work to maintain those connections, which harkens back to the "wear of winning" line in his poem. For instance, Belloc spent time hanging out and creatively collaborating with Chesterton at his home. 

We can learn from Belloc's words by making time to reconnect with friends. If doesn't have to be a grandiose plan, either. By sending a text or funny meme, we can share a laugh or a quick check-in, and show our friends how much we love and value them. In difficult times, we can reach out to them for support, and support them through their troubles too.

• " ... a very large number of things that do happen in real life and are interesting never seem to get into novels. For instance, repetitions. Your hero will fall off a horse and break something, but he does not do it twenty times as he would if he were a living being."
• "These are the advantages of travel, that one meets so many men whom one would otherwise never meet, and that one feeds as it were upon the complexity of mankind."
• "'When friendship disappears then there is a space left open to that awful loneliness of the outside which is like the cold of space between the planets. It is an air in which men perish utterly.'"
• "It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them."
• "When I am dead, I hope it may be said: / 'His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.'"