Top 204 Quotes & Sayings by Henry Fielding - Page 2

A good countenance is a letter of recommendation.

A wonder lasts but nine days, and then the puppy's eyes are open.

When I'm not thanked at all, I'm thanked enough.

Good-humor will even go so far as often to supply the lack of wit.

Fashion is the great governor of this world; it presides, not only in matters of dress and amusement, but in law, physic, politics, religion, and all other things of the gravest kind; indeed, the wisest of men would be puzzled to give any better reason why particular forms in all these have been at certain times universally received, and at others universally rejected, than that they were in or out of fashion.

Enough is equal to a feast.

Thirst teaches all animals to drink, but drunkenness belongs only to man.

There is a sort of knowledge beyond the power of learning to bestow, and this is to be had in conversation; so necessary is this to the understanding the characters of men, that none are more ignorant of them than those learned pedants whose lives have been entirely consumed in colleges and among books; for however exquisitely human nature may have been described by writers the true practical system can be learned only in the world.

No one hath seen beauty in its highest lustre who hath never seen it in distress.

Now in reality, the world has paid too great a compliment to critics, and has imagined them to be men of much greater profundity than they really are.

Thwackum was for doing justice, and leaving mercy to heaven.

Domestic happiness is the end of almost all our pursuits, and the common reward of all our pains. When men find themselves forever barred from this delightful fruition, they are lost to all industry, and grow careless of all their worldly affairs. Thus they become bad subjects, bad relations, bad friends, and bad men.

Let no man be sorry he has done good, because others have done evil.

Wine and youth are fire upon fire.

Penny saved is a penny got.

When I mention religion I mean the Christian religion; and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion; and not only the Protestant religion, but the Church of England.

I look upon the vulgar observation, 'That the devil often deserts his friends, and leaves them in the lurch,' to be a great abuse on that gentleman's character. Perhaps he may sometimes desert those who are only his cup acquaintance; or who, at most, are but half his; but he generally stands by those who are thoroughly his servants, and helps them off in all extremities, till their bargain expires.

It may be laid down as a general rule, that no woman who hath any great pretensions to admiration is ever well pleased in a company where she perceives herself to fill only the second place.

It hath been often said, that it is not death, but dying, which is terrible.

Human life very much resembles a game of chess: for, as in the latter, while a gamester is too attentive to secure himself very strongly on one side of the board, he is apt to leave an unguarded opening on the other, so doth it often happen in life.

Prudence is a duty which we owe ourselves, and if we will be so much our own enemies as to neglect it, we are not to wonder if the world is deficient in discharging their duty to us; for when a man lays the foundation of his own ruin, others too often are apt to build upon it.

A beau is everything of a woman but the sex, and nothing of a man beside it.

We must eat to live, and not live to eat.

Money will say more in one moment than the most eloquent lover can in years.

Giving comfort under affliction requires that penetration into the human mind, joined to that experience which knows how to soothe, how to reason, and how to ridicule; taking the utmost care never to apply those arts improperly.

What caricature is in painting, burlesque is in writing; and in the same manner the comic writer and painter correlate to each other; as in the former, the painter seems to have the advantage, so it is in the latter infinitely on the side of the writer. For the monstrous is much easier to paint than describe, and the ridiculous to describe than paint.

However exquisitely human nature may have been described by writers, the true practical system can be learned only in the world.

An author ought to consider himself, not as a gentleman who gives a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary, at which all persons are welcome for their money.

A comic writer should of all others be the least excused for deviating from nature, since it may not be always so easy for a serious poet to meet with the great and the admirable; but life every where furnishes an accurate observer with the ridiculous.

Some virtuous women are too liberal in their insults to a frail sister; but virtue can support itself without borrowing any assistance from the vices of other women.

Dancing begets warmth, which is the parent of wantonness. It is, Sir, the great grandfather of cuckoldom.

Perhaps the summary of good-breeding may be reduced to this rule. "Behave unto all men as you would they should behave unto you." This will most certainly oblige us to treat all mankind with the utmost civility and respect, there being nothing that we desire more than to be treated so by them.

Tea! The panacea for everything from weariness to a cold to a murder Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.

We should not be too hasty in bestowing either our praise or censure on mankind, since we shall often find such a mixture of good and evil in the same character, that it may require a very accurate judgment and a very elaborate inquiry to determine on which side the balance turns.

A broken heart is a distemper which kills many more than is generally imagined, and would have a fair title to a place in the bills of mortality, did it not differ in one instance from all other diseases, namely, that no physicians can cure it.

The life of a coquette is one constant lie; and the only rule by which you can form any correct judgment of them is that they are never what they seem.

Riches without charity are nothing worth. They are a blessing only to him who makes them a blessing to others.

He grew weary of this condescension, and began to treat the opinions of his wife with that haughtiuess and insolence, which none but those who deserve some contempt themselves can bestow, and those only who deserve no contempt can bear.

A tender-hearted and compassionate disposition, which inclines men to pity and feel the misfortunes of others, and which is, even for its own sake, incapable of involving any man in ruin and misery, is of all tempers of mind the most amiable; and though it seldom receives much honor, is worthy of the highest.

A lottery is a taxation on all of the fools in creation.

Never trust the man who has reason to suspect that you know he hath injured you.

for nothing can be more reasonable, than that slaves and flatterers should exact the same taxes on all below them, which they themselves pay to all above them.

For I hope my Friends will pardon me, when I declare, I know none of them without a Fault; and I should be sorry if I could imagine, I had any Friend who could not see mine. Forgiveness, of this Kind, we give and demand in Turn.

The same animal which hath the honour to have some part of his flesh eaten at the table of a duke, may perhaps be degraded in another part,and some of his limbs gibbeted, as it were, in the vilest stall in town.

Commend a fool for his wit, or a rogue for his honesty and he will receive you into his favour.

The only source of the true Ridiculous (as it appears to me) is affectation

It is a good maxim to trust a person entirely or not at all.

The woman and the soldier who do not defend the first pass will never defend the last.

Life may as properly be called an art as any other.

A man may go to heaven with half the pains it cost him to purchase hell.

It is not from nature, but from education and habits, that our wants are chiefly derived.

What is commonly called love, namely the desire of satisfying a voracious appetite with a certain quantity of delicate white human flesh.

...the act of eating,which hath by several wise men been considered as extremely mean and derogatory from the philosophic dignity, must be in some measure performed by the greatest prince, hero, or philosopher upon earth; nay, sometimes Nature hath been so frolicsome as to exact of these dignified characters a much more exorbitant share of this office than she hath obliged those of the lowest orders to perform.

The prudence of the best heads is often defeated by tenderness of the best hearts.

To the composition of novels and romances, nothing is necessary but paper, pens, and ink, with the manual capacity of using them.

It is not enough that your designs, nay that your actions, are intrinsically good, you must take care they shall appear so.

What a silly fellow must he be who would do the devil's work for free.

O vanity, how little is thy force acknowledged or thy operations discerned! How wantonly dost thou deceive mankind under different disguises! Sometimes thou dost wear the face of pity; sometimes of generosity; nay, thou hast the assurance to put on those glorious ornaments which belong only to heroic virtue.

Nothing more aggravates ill success than the near approach of good.

When the effects of female jealousy do not appear openly in their proper colours of rage and fury, we may suspect that mischievous passion to be at work privately, and attempting to undermine, what it doth not attack above-ground.