Henry Fielding Quotations

Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.

A rich man without charity is a rogue; and perhaps it would be no difficult matter to prove that he is also a fool.

Without adversity a person hardly knows whether they are honest or not.

Conscience - the only incorruptible thing about us.

Worth begets in base minds, envy; in great souls, emulation.

Guilt has very quick ears to an accusation.

Great joy, especially after a sudden change of circumstances, is apt to be silent, and dwells rather in the heart than on the tongue.

Neither great poverty nor great riches will hear reason

There is not in the universe a more ridiculous, nor a more contemptible animal, than a proud clergyman.

If you make money your god, it will plague you like the devil.

He that can heroically endure adversity will bear prosperity with equal greatness of soul; for the mind that cannot be dejected by the former is not likely to be transported with the later.

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

Dancing begets warmth, which is the parent of wantonness.

We are as liable to be corrupted by books, as by companions.

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

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

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

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

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

A good face they say, is a letter of recommendation. O Nature, Nature, why art thou so dishonest, as ever to send men with these false recommendations into the World!

There is an insolence which none but those who themselves deserve contempt can bestow, and those only who deserve no contempt can bear.

When children are doing nothing, they are doing mischief.

Money is the fruit of evil, as often as the root of it.

I describe not men, but manners; not an individual, but a species.

The characteristic of coquettes is affectation governed by whim.

There is perhaps no surer mark of folly, than to attempt to correct natural infirmities of those we love.

When I'm not thanked at all, I'm thanked enough, I've done my duty, and I've done no more.

When widows exclaim loudly against second marriages, I would always lay a wager than the man, If not the wedding day, is absolutely fixed on.

One fool at least in every married couple.

The devil take me, if I think anything but love to be the object of love.

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

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

A newspaper consists of just the same number of words, whether there be any news in it or not.

It is not death, but dying, which is terrible.

The world have payed too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them men of much greater profundity than they really are.

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

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

Some folks rail against other folks, because other folks have what some folks would be glad of.

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

I have found it; I have discovered the cause of all the misfortunes which befell him. A public school, Joseph, was the cause of all the calamities which he afterwards suffered. Public schools are the nurseries of all vice and immorality.

Since I have dealt in suds, I could never discover more than two reasons for shaving; the one is to get a beard, the other is to get rid of one

We must eat to live and live to eat

It has often been said that it is not death but dying that is terrible.

When widows exclaim loudly against second marriage, I would always lay a wager that the man, if not the wedding-day, is absolutely fixed on.

Composed that monstrous animal a husband and wife.

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

Flattery is never so agreeable as to our blind side; commend a fool for his wit, or a knave for his honesty, and they will receive you into their bosoms

His designs were strictly honorable, as the phrase is: that is, to rob a lady of her fortune by way of marriage

George was a great dunce, but no matter for that: all men do not thrive in the world according to their learning

For clergy are men as well as other folks.

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

A good countenance is a letter of recommendation.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

All nature wears one universal grin.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Public schools are the nurseries of all vice and immorality.

Enough is equal to a feast.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

...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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

The good or evil we confer on others very often, I believe, recoils on ourselves; for as men of a benign disposition enjoy their own acts of beneficence equally with those to whom they are done, so there are scarce any natures so entirely diabolical as to be capable of doing injuries without paying themselves some pangs for the ruin which they bring on their fellow-creatures.

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.

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.

Contempt of others is the truest symptom of a base and bad heart,--while it suggests itself to the mean and the vile, and tickles there little fancy on every occasion, it never enters the great and good mind but on the strongest motives; nor is it then a welcome guest,--affording only an uneasy sensation, and bringing always with it a mixture of concern and compassion.

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.

Dignity and love were never yet boon companions.

We endeavor to conceal our vices under the disguise of the opposite virtues.

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.

Penny saved is a penny got.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Wisdom is the talent of buying virtuous pleasures at the cheapest rate.

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.