G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), "On Pigs as Pets,"
The Uses of Diversity: A Book of Essays (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1921), pp. 97-104 (at 99-100):
The actual lines of a pig (I mean a really fat pig) are among the loveliest and most luxurious in nature, the pig has the same great curves, swift and yet heavy, which see in rushing water or in rolling cloud....Now, there is no point of view from which really corpulent pig is not full of sumptuous and satisfying curves....In short, he has that fuller, subtler and more universal kind of shapeliness which the unthinking (gazing at pigs and distinguished journalists) mistake for mere absence of shape. For fatness itself is a valuable quality. While it creates admiration in the onlookers, it creates modesty in the possessor.
George Morland (1763-1804),
In Front of the Sty:
