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Home  »  Dictionary of Quotations  »  Fielding

James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.

Fielding

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

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

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

Domestic happiness is the end of almost all our pursuits, and the common reward of all our pains.

Fashion is the great governor of the world.

Gravity is the best cloak for sin in all countries.

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

Greatness is like a laced coat from Monmouth Street, which fortune lends us for a day to wear, to-morrow puts it on another’s back.

Hang constancy! you know too much of the world to be constant, sure.

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 by the latter.

I know but of one solid objection to absolute monarchy; the difficulty of finding any man adequate to the office.

It is a common failing of old men to attribute all wisdom to themselves.

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

It is the nature of despair to blind us to all means of safety.

Life may as properly be called an art as any other, and the great incidents in it are no more to be considered as mere accidents than the severest members of a fine statue or a noble poem.

Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.

Many walk into the battle and are carried out of it.

Men of true wisdom and goodness are contented to take persons and things as they are, without complaining of their imperfections or attempting to amend them.

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

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

The finest composition of human nature, as well as the finest china, may have a flaw in it, and this in either case is equally incurable.

The greatest part of mankind labour under one delirium or another.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Where law ends, tyranny begins.

Wine and youth are fire upon fire.

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

Without adversity a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not.