Top 100 Henry Fielding Quotes
#1. A rich man without charity is a rogue; and perhaps it would be no difficult matter to prove that he is also a fool.
Henry Fielding
#3. When mighty roast beef was the Englishman's food It ennobled our hearts and enriched our blood
Our soldiers were brave and our courtiers were good. Oh! the roast beef of England. And Old England's roast beef.
Henry Fielding
#4. The elegant Lord Shaftesbury somewhere objects to telling too much truth: by which it may be fairly inferred, that, in some cases, to lie is not only excusable but commendable. And
Henry Fielding
#5. It is well known to all great men, that by conferring an obligation they do not always procure a friend, but are certain of creating many enemies.
Henry Fielding
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. 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
#9. I describe not men, but manners; not an individual, but a species.
Henry Fielding
#10. When children are doing nothing, they are doing mischief.
Henry Fielding
#11. Never trust the man who has reason to suspect that you know he has injured you
Henry Fielding
#12. Thwackum was for doing justice, and leaving mercy to heaven.
Henry Fielding
#13. Neither great poverty nor great riches will hear reason.
Henry Fielding
#14. Money will say more in one moment than the most eloquent lover can in years.
Henry Fielding
#15. 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
#16. A man may go to heaven with half the pains it cost him to purchase hell.
Henry Fielding
#17. Comfort me by a solemn Assurance, that when the little Parlour in which I sit at this Instant, shall be reduced to a worse furnished Box, I shall be read, with Honour, by those who never knew nor saw me, and whom I shall neither know nor see.
Henry Fielding
#18. In the forming of female friendships beauty seldom recommends one woman to another.
Henry Fielding
#19. Money is the fruit of evil, as often as the root of it.
Henry Fielding
#20. Worth begets in base minds, envy; in great souls, emulation.
Henry Fielding
#21. To whom nothing is given, of him can nothing be required.
Henry Fielding
#22. Can any man have a higher notion of the rule of right and the eternal fitness of things?
Henry Fielding
#23. 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
#24. Nothing more aggravates ill success than the near approach of good.
Henry Fielding
#25. One of the maxims which the devil, in a late visit upon earth, left to his disciples, is, when once you are got up, to kick the stool from under you. In plain English, when you have made your fortune by the good offices of a friend, you are advised to discard him as soon as you can.
Henry Fielding
#26. His designs were strictly honourable, as the phrase is; that is, to rob a lady of her fortune by way of marriage.
Henry Fielding
#27. If thou hast seen all these without knowing what beauty is, thou hast no eyes; if without feeling its power, thou hast no heart.
Henry Fielding
#28. What was said by the Latin poet of labor
that it conquers all things
is much more true when applied to impudence.
Henry Fielding
#29. Dancing begets warmth, which is the parent of wantonness.
Henry Fielding
#31. Good writers will, indeed, do well to imitate the ingenious traveller ... who always proportions his stay in any place.
Henry Fielding
#32. We are as liable to be corrupted by books as we are by companions.
Henry Fielding
#33. It is a good maxim to trust a person entirely or not at all.
Henry Fielding
#34. No one hath seen beauty in its highest lustre who hath never seen it in distress.
Henry Fielding
#35. To the generality of men you cannot give a stronger hint for them to impose upon you than by imposing upon yourself.
Henry Fielding
#36. 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
#37. but her patience was perhaps tired out, for this is a virtue which is very apt to be fatigued by exercise. Mrs
Henry Fielding
#38. The arrows of fortune ... .. derive their force from the velocity with which they are discharged; for, when they approach you by slow and perceptible degrees, they have but very little power to do you mischief.
Henry Fielding
#39. Every physician almost hath his favourite disease.
Henry Fielding
#40. The only source of the true Ridiculous (as it appears to me) is affectation
Henry Fielding
#42. Heroes, notwithstanding the high ideas which, by the means of flatterers, they may entertain of themselves, or the world may conceive of them, have certainly more of mortal than divine about them.
Henry Fielding
#43. It is not from nature, but from education and habits, that our wants are chiefly derived.
Henry Fielding
#44. 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.
Henry Fielding
#45. We endeavor to conceal our vices under the disguise of the opposite virtues.
Henry Fielding
#46. If you make money your god, it will plague you like the devil.
Henry Fielding
#47. Some general officers should pay a stricter regard to truth than to call the depopulating other countries the service of their own.
Henry Fielding
#49. There is scarce 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
#50. There is nothing a man of good sense dreads in a wife so much as her having more sense than himself.
Henry Fielding
#52. The woman and the soldier who do not defend the first pass will never defend the last.
Henry Fielding
#53. Now that part of his head which nature designed for the reservoir of drink being very shallow, a small quantity of liquor overflowed it and opened the sluices of his heart, so that all the secrets there deposited run out.
Henry Fielding
#54. 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
#55. In Truth, none seem to have any Title to assert Human Nature to be necessarily and universally evil, but those whose own Minds afford them one Instance of this natural Depravity.
Henry Fielding
#57. 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
#58. 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
#59. The blackest ink of fate are sure my lot, And when fate writ my name it made a blot.
Henry Fielding
#60. To say the Truth, I have often concluded, that the honest Part of Mankind would be much too hard for the knavish, if they could bring themselves to incur the Guilt, or thought it worth their while to take the Trouble.
Henry Fielding
#62. 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.
Henry Fielding
#63. Wine is a turncoat; first a friend and then an enemy.
Henry Fielding
#64. 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
#65. When I'm not thanked at all, I'm thanked enough, I've done my duty, and I've done no more.
Henry Fielding
#67. 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
#68. It is a trite but true definition that examples work more forcibly on the mind than precepts.
Henry Fielding
#69. Custom may lead a man into many errors; but it justifies none.
Henry Fielding
#71. Make money your god and it will plague you like the devil.
Henry Fielding
#72. Guilt, on the contrary, like a base thief, suspects every eye that beholds him to be privy to his transgressions, and every tongue that mentions his name to be proclaiming them.
Henry Fielding
#73. There is no zeal blinder than that which is inspired
with a love of justice against offenders.
Henry Fielding
#74. It is not enough that your designs, nay that your actions, are intrinsically good, you must take care they shall appear so.
Henry Fielding
#75. 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
#76. I never reasoned on what I should do, but what I had done; as if my Reason had her eyes behind, and could only see backwards.
Henry Fielding
#77. Wisdom is the talent of buying virtuous pleasures at the cheapest rate.
Henry Fielding
#78. 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
#79. 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
#82. 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
#83. A beau is everything of a woman but the sex, and nothing of a man beside it.
Henry Fielding
#84. Such indeed was her image, that neither could Shakespeare describe, nor Hogarth paint, nor Clive act, a fury in higher perfection.
Henry Fielding
#85. I am content; that is a blessing greater than riches; and he to whom that is given need ask no more.
Henry Fielding
#86. Commend a fool for his wit, or a rogue for his honesty and he will receive you into his favor.
Henry Fielding
#88. What a silly fellow must he be who would do the devil's work for free.
Henry Fielding
#89. A lottery is a taxation on all of the fools in creation.
Henry Fielding
#90. 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
#91. 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.
Henry Fielding
#93. The constant desire of pleasing which is the peculiar quality of some, may be called the happiest of all desires in this that it rarely fails of attaining its end when not disgraced by affectation.
Henry Fielding
#94. The citadel of Jones was now taken by surprise. All those considerations of honour and prudence which our heroe had lately with so much military wisdom placed as guards over the avenues of his heart, ran away from their posts, and the god of love marched in, in triumph.
Henry Fielding
#95. Considering the unforeseen events of this world, we should be taught that no human condition should inspire men with absolute despair.
Henry Fielding
#96. 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
#97. The exceptions of the scrupulous put one in mind of some general pardons where everything is forgiven except crimes.
Henry Fielding
#98. Gravity is the best cloak for sin in all countries.
Henry Fielding
#99. The worst of men generally have the words rogue and villain most in their mouths, as the lowest of all wretches are the aptest to cry out low in the pit.
Henry Fielding
#100. Conscience - the only incorruptible thing about us.
Henry Fielding
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