Henry Fielding famous quotes

Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.
-- Henry Fielding

#Love #Gossip #Tea

Make money your god, and it will plague you like the devil.
-- Henry Fielding

#Money #Devil #Making Money

Scarcely one person in a thousand is capable of tasting the happiness of others.
-- Henry Fielding

#Happiness #Thousand #Persons

There is nothing so useful to man in general, nor so beneficial to particular societies and individuals, as trade. This is that alma mater, at whose plentiful breast all mankind are nourished.
-- Henry Fielding

#Men #Alma Mater #Individual

All nature wears one universal grin.
-- Henry Fielding

#Garden

When children are doing nothing, they are doing mischief.
-- Henry Fielding

#Witty #Children #Doing Nothing

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

#Sorry #Men #Evil

Wine is a turncoat; first a friend and then an enemy.
-- Henry Fielding

#Wine #Enemy #Firsts

Custom may lead a man into many errors; but it justifies none.
-- Henry Fielding

#Men #Errors #May

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

#Tea #Scandal #Cold

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

#Design #Care #Action

Guilt has very quick ears to an accusation.
-- Henry Fielding

#Guilt #Ears #Shame

Public schools are the nurseries of all vice and immorality.
-- Henry Fielding

#Education #School #Vices

Neither great poverty nor great riches will hear reason
-- Henry Fielding

#Riches #Poverty #Reason

LOVE: A word properly applied to our delight in particular kinds of food; sometimes metaphorically spoken of the favorite objects of all our appetites.
-- Henry Fielding

#Love #Food #Delight

A truly elegant taste is generally accompanied with excellency of heart.
-- Henry Fielding

#Love #Hate #Heart

Fashion is the science of appearance, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be.
-- Henry Fielding

#Fashion #Science #Inspire

Enough is equal to a feast.
-- Henry Fielding

#Enough #Equal

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.
-- Henry Fielding

#Sorry #Giving #Demand

Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it, a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not.
-- Henry Fielding

#Inspirational #Adversity #Men

It is much easier to make good men wise, than to make bad men good.
-- Henry Fielding

#Wise #Men #Good Man

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.
-- Henry Fielding

#Heart #Broken #Despair

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

#Death #Dying #Said

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

#Dance #Dancing #Parent

Gravity is the best cloak for sin in all countries.
-- Henry Fielding

#Country #Sin #Gravity

Dignity and love were never yet boon companions.
-- Henry Fielding

#And Love #Dignity #Boon

The exceptions of the scrupulous put one in mind of some general pardons where everything is forgiven except crimes.
-- Henry Fielding

#Mind #Crime #Pardon

Fear hath the common fault of a justice of peace, and is apt to conclude hastily from every slight circumstance, without examining the evidence on both sides.
-- Henry Fielding

#Fear #Justice #Faults

A grave aspect to a grave character is of much more consequence than the world is generally aware of; a barber may make you laugh, but a surgeon ought rather to make you cry.
-- Henry Fielding

#Character #Laughing #World

The highest friendship must always lead us to the highest pleasure.
-- Henry Fielding

#Friendship #Pleasure

Gaming is a vice the more dangerous as it is deceitful; and, contrary to every other species of luxury, flatters its votaries with the hopes of increasing their wealth; so that avarice itself is so far from securing us against its temptations that it often betrays the more thoughtless and giddy part of mankind into them.
-- Henry Fielding

#Gambling #Luxury #Temptation

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

#Wit #Good Humor

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

#Animal #Men #Drink

Good-nature is that benevolent and amiable temper of mind which disposes us to feel the misfortunes and enjoy the happiness of others, and, consequently, pushes us on to promote the latter and prevent the former; and that without any abstract contemplation on the beauty of virtue, and without the allurements or terrors of religion.
-- Henry Fielding

#Mind #Virtue #Contemplation

There are persons of that general philanthropy and easy tempers, which the world in contempt generally calls good-natured, who seem to be sent into the world with the same design with which men put little fish into a pike pond, in order only to be devoured by that voracious water-hero.
-- Henry Fielding

#Hero #Men #Order

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.
-- Henry Fielding

#Lying #Coquette #Judgment

Conscience is a judge in every man's breast, which none can cheat or corrupt, and perhaps the only incorrupt thing about him; yet, inflexible and honest as this judge is (however polluted the bench on which he sits), no man can, in my opinion, enjoy any applause which is not there adjudged to be his due.
-- Henry Fielding

#Men #Judging #Benches

Affectation proceeds from one of these two causes,--vanity or hypocrisy; for as vanity puts us on affecting false characters, in order to purchase applause; so hypocrisy sets us on an endeavor to avoid censure, by concealing our vices under an appearance of their opposite virtues.
-- Henry Fielding

#Character #Vanity #Order

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.
-- Henry Fielding

#May #Admiration #Wells

The slander of some people is as great a recommendation as the praise of others.
-- Henry Fielding

#People #Praise #Recommendations

A good heart will, at all times, betray the best head in the world.
-- Henry Fielding

#Heart #World #All Time

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

#Taxation #Fool #Creation

Men who pay for what they eat will insist on gratifying their palates
-- Henry Fielding

#Men #Pay #Palate

Penny saved is a penny got.
-- Henry Fielding

#Pennies

Life may as properly be called an art as any other.
-- Henry Fielding

#Art #May

To speak a bold truth, I am, after much mature deliberation, inclined to suspect that the public voice hath, in all ages, done much injustice to Fortune, and hath convicted her of many facts in which she had not the least concern.
-- Henry Fielding

#Voice #Age #Done

Great vices are the proper objects of our detestation, smaller faults of our pity, but affectation appears to be the only true source of the ridiculous.
-- Henry Fielding

#Vices #Faults #Ridiculous

As a conquered rebellion strengthens a government, or as health is more perfectly established by recovery from some diseases; so anger, when removed, often gives new life to affection.
-- Henry Fielding

#Anger #Recovery #Government

There is scarcely any man, how much soever he may despise the character of a flatterer, but will condescend in the meanest manner to flatter himself.
-- Henry Fielding

#Character #Men #May

Wicked companions invite us to hell.
-- Henry Fielding

#Wicked #Hell #Companion

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.
-- Henry Fielding

#Art #Giving #Mind

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.
-- Henry Fielding

#Writing #Sides #Ridiculous

As it often happens that the best men are but little known, and consequently cannot extend the usefulness of their examples a great way, the biographer is of great utility, as, by communicating such valuable patterns to the world, he may perhaps do a more extensive service to mankind than the person whose life originally afforded the pattern.
-- Henry Fielding

#Men #Example #World

There cannot be a move glorious object in creation than a human being replete with benevolence, meditating in what manner he might render himself most acceptable to his Creator by doing most good to His creatures.
-- Henry Fielding

#Moving #Might #Creation

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

#Sex #Men

There are two considerations which always imbitter the heart of an avaricious man--the one is a perpetual thirst after more riches, the other the prospect of leaving what he has already acquired.
-- Henry Fielding

#Heart #Men #Two

In a debate, rather pull to pieces the argument of thy antagonists than offer him any of thy own; for thus thou wilt fight him in his own country.
-- Henry Fielding

#Country #Fighting #Pieces

Hairbreadth missings of happiness look like the insults of Fortune.
-- Henry Fielding

#Missing #Looks #Insult

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.
-- Henry Fielding

#Jealousy #Passion #Female

Wit, like hunger, will be with great difficulty restrained from falling on vice and ignorance, where there is great plenty and variety of food.
-- Henry Fielding

#Fall #Ignorance #Vices

Some general officers should pay a stricter regard to truth than to call the depopulating other countries the service of their own.
-- Henry Fielding

#Country #War #Pay

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.
-- Henry Fielding

#Support #Vices #Insult

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.
-- Henry Fielding

#Vanity #Generosity #Littles

Success is a fruit of slow growth.
-- Henry Fielding

#Success #Growth #Fruit

Sensuality not only debases both body and mind, but dulls the keen edge of pleasure.
-- Henry Fielding

#Mind #Body #Pleasure

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.
-- Henry Fielding

#Men #Enemy #Ruins

Nothing can be so quick and sudden as the operations of the mind, especially when hope, or fear, or jealousy, to which the other two are but journeymen, set it to work.
-- Henry Fielding

#Two #Mind #Operations

With the latitude of unbounded scurrility, it is easy enough to attain the character of a wit, especially when it is considered how wonderfully pleasant it is to the generality of the public to see the folly of their acquaintance exposed by a third person.
-- Henry Fielding

#Character #Enough #Easy

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

#Eye #Nine #Lasts

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

#Trust #Maxims #Persons

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

#World #May #Human Nature

A good man therefore is a standing lesson to us all.
-- Henry Fielding

#Men #Good Man #Lessons

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.
-- Henry Fielding

#Character #Gentleman #Abuse

...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.
-- Henry Fielding

#Wise #Hero #Character

It is admirably remarked, by a most excellent writer, that zeal can no more hurry a man to act in direct opposition to itself than a rapid stream can carry a boat against its own current.
-- Henry Fielding

#Men #Boat #Excellent

Setting down in writing, is a lasting memory.
-- Henry Fielding

#Memories #Writing #Lasting

Most men like in women what is most opposite their own characters.
-- Henry Fielding

#Women #Character #Men

Love may be likened to a disease in this respect, that when it is denied a vent in one part, it will certainly break out in another; hence what a woman's lips often conceal, her eyes, her blushes, and many little involuntary actions betray.
-- Henry Fielding

#Love #Eye #Lips

Beauty may be the object of liking--great qualities of admiration--good ones of esteem--but love only is the object of love.
-- Henry Fielding

#Love #Quality #May

It is with jealousy as with the gout. When such distempers are in the blood, there is never any security against their breaking out, and that often on the slightest occasions, and when least suspected.
-- Henry Fielding

#Jealousy #Blood #Gout

Good-breeding is not confined to externals, much less to any particular dress or attitude of the body; it is the art of pleasing, or contributing as much as possible to the ease and happiness of those with whom you converse.
-- Henry Fielding

#Art #Attitude #Dresses

The greatest part of mankind labor under one delirium or another; and Don Quixote differed from the rest, not in madness, but the species of it. The covetous, the prodigal, the superstitious, the libertine, and the coffee-house politician, are all Quixotes in their several ways.
-- Henry Fielding

#Coffee #House #Way

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

#Soldier #Lasts #Firsts

As the malicious disposition of mankind is too well known, and the cruel pleasure which they take in destroying the reputation of others, the use we are to make of this knowledge is, to afford no handle for reproach; for bad as the world is, it seldom falls on anyone who hath not given some slight cause for censure.
-- Henry Fielding

#Fall #Use #World

As it is the nature of a kite to devour little birds, so it is the nature of some minds to insult and tyrannize over little people; this being the means which they use to recompense themselves for their extreme servility and condescension to their superiors; 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.
-- Henry Fielding

#Mean #People #Bird

O innocence, how glorious and happy a portion art thou to the breast that possesses thee! thou fearest neither the eyes nor the tongues of men. Truth, the most powerful of all things, is thy strongest friend; and the brighter the light is in which thou art displayed, the more it discovers thy transcendent beauties.
-- Henry Fielding

#Art #Powerful #Eye

Ingratitude never so thoroughly pierces the human breast as when it proceeds from those in whose behalf we have been guilty of transgressions.
-- Henry Fielding

#Guilty #Breasts #Behalf

What was said by the Latin poet of labor--that it conquers all things--is much more true when applied to impudence.
-- Henry Fielding

#Latin #Conquer #Poet

The man who is wantonly profuse of his promises ought to sink his credit as much as a tradesman would by uttering a great number of promissory notes payable at a distant day. The truest conclusion in both cases is, that neither intend or will be able to pay. And as the latter most probably intends to cheat you of your money, so the former at least designs to cheat you of your thanks.
-- Henry Fielding

#Men #Numbers #Design

There are those who never reason on what they should do, but what they have done; as if Reason had her eyes behind, and could only see backwards.
-- Henry Fielding

#Eye #Done #Reason

Habit hath so vast a prevalence over the human mind that there is scarce anything too strange or too strong to be asserted of it. The story of the miser who, from long accustoming to cheat others, came at last to cheat himself, and with great delight and triumph picked his own pocket of a guinea to convey to his hoard, is not impossible or improbable.
-- Henry Fielding

#Strong #Long #Mind

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.
-- Henry Fielding

#Character #Evil #Balance

It is an error common to many to take the character of mankind from the worst and basest amongst them; whereas, as an excellent writer has observed, nothing should be esteemed as characteristical, of a species but what is to be found amongst the best and the most perfect individuals of that species.
-- Henry Fielding

#Character #Errors #Perfect

Though we may sometimes unintentionally bestow our beneficence on the unworthy, it does not take from the merit of the act. For charity doth not adopt the vices of its objects.
-- Henry Fielding

#Vices #Doe #Charity

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.
-- Henry Fielding

#Book #Giving #Gentleman

It is a trite but true Observation, that Examples work more forcibly on the Mind than Precepts: and if this be just in what is odious and blameable, it is more strongly so in what is amiable and praiseworthy.
-- Henry Fielding

#Book #Mind #Example

In the forming of female friendships beauty seldom recommends one woman to another.
-- Henry Fielding

#Beauty #Female #Female Friendship

The raillery which is consistent with good-breeding is a gentle animadversion of some foible, which, while it raises the laugh in the rest of the company, doth not put the person rallied out of countenance, or expose him to shame or contempt. On the contrary, the jest should be so delicate that the object of it should be capable of joining in the mirth it occasions.
-- Henry Fielding

#Laughing #Joining #Mirth

To the generality of men you cannot give a stronger hint for them to impose upon you than by imposing upon yourself.
-- Henry Fielding

#Men #Giving #Stronger