Quotes from Henry Fielding

A good countenance is a letter of recommendation.

Reader, I think proper, before we proceed any further together, to acquaint thee that I intend to digress, through this whole history, as often as I see occasion, of which I am myself a better judge than any pitiful critic whatever; and here I must desire all those critics to mind their own business, and not to intermeddle with affairs or works which no ways concern them; for till they produce the authority by which they are constituted judges, I shall not plead to their jurisdiction.

Men who are ill-natured and quarrelsome when drunk are very worthy persons when sober. For drink in reality doth not reverse nature or create passions in men which did not exist in them before. It takes away the guard of reason and consequently forces us to produce those symptoms which many when sober have art enough to conceal.

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

To see a Woman you love in Distress; to be unable to relieve her, and at the same Time to reflect that you have brought her into this Situation, is, perhaps, a Curse of which no Imagination can represent the Horrors to those who have not felt it.

All Nature wears one universal grin.

There are a set of religious, or rather moral writers, who teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery, in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.

And here, I believe, the wit is generally misunderstood. In reality, it lies in desiring another to kiss your a-- for having just before threatened to kick his; for I have observed very accurately, that no one ever desires you to kick that which belongs to himself, nor offers to kiss this part in another.

One fool at least in every married couple.

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

It is a trite but true observation, that examples work more forcibly on the mind than precepts.

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.

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.

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

a French lieutenant, who had been long enough out of France to forget his own language, but not long enough in England to learn ours, so that he really spoke no language at all.

Your religion...serves you only for an excuse for your faults, but is no incentive to your virtue.

How often, when I have told you that all men are false and perjury alike, and grow tired of us as soon as ever they have had their wicked wills of us, how often have you sworn you would never forsake me?

a good conscience is never lawless in the worst regulated state, and will provide those laws for itself, which the neglect of legislators hath forgotten to supply.

her patience was, perhaps, tired out; for this is a virtue which is very apt to be fatigued by exercise.

To whom nothing is given, of him can nothing be required.

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.

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

It is a trite but true definition that examples work more forcibly on the mind than precepts.

No one hath seen beauty in its highest lustre who hath never seen it in distress.