Henry Fielding: Trending quotes (page 2)

“One fool at least in every married couple.”

“This story will not go down.”

“Can any man have a higher notion of the rule of right and the eternal fitness of things?”

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

“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.”

“When children are doing nothing, they are doing mischief.”

“In reality, the world have payed too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them men of much greater profundity than they really are.”

“All Nature wears one universal grin.”

“…the excellence of the mental entertainment consists less in the subject than in the author's skill in well dressing it up.”

“Depend on me; never fear your enemies. I'll warrant we make more noise than they.”

“Thy modesty's a candle to thy merit.”

“He in a few minutes ravished this fair creature, or at least would have ravished her, if she had not, by a timely compliance, prevented him.”

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

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

“Lo, when two dogs are fighting in the streets,
With a third dog one of the two dogs meets;
With angry teeth he bites him to the bone,
And this dog smarts for what that dog has done.”

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

“Sir, money, money, the most charming of all things; money, which will say more in one moment than the most elegant lover can in years. Perhaps you will say a man is not young; I answer he is rich. He is not genteel, handsome, witty, brave, good-humoured, but he is rich, rich, rich, rich, rich — that one word contradicts everything you can say against him.”

“For it is very hard, my lord," said a convicted felon at the bar to the late excellent judge Burnet, "to hang a poor man for stealing a horse." "You are not to be hanged sir," answered my ever-honored and beloved friend, "for stealing a horse, but you are to be hanged that horses may not be stolen.”

“Covent Garden Journal (11 January 1752)”
Illustrious predecessors.