Quotes from Henry Fielding

as she kept one maid-servant, she always took care to chuse her out of that order of females whose faces are taken as a kind of security for their virtue;

As there is no wholesomer, so perhaps there are few stronger, sleeping potions than fatigue.

A treacherous friend is the most dangerous enemy.

He had indeed conversed so entirely with money, that it may almost be doubted whether he imagined there was any other thing really existing in the world; this at least may be certainly averred, that he firmly believed nothing else to have any real value.

Such indeed was her image, that neither could Shakespeare describe, nor Hogarth paint, nor Clive act, a fury in higher perfection.

Having at length finished his laboured harangue, with which the audience, though it had greatly raised their attention and admiration, were not much edified, as they really understood not a single

as the sister often foresaw what never came to pass, so the brother often saw much more than was actually the truth.

To retrieve the ill consequences of a foolish conduct, and by struggling manfully with distress to subdue it, is one of the noblest efforts of wisdom and virtue. Whoever, therefore, calls such a man fortunate, is guilty of no less impropriety in speech than he would be who should call the statuary or the poet fortunate who carved a Venus or who writ an Iliad.

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

there is no one circumstance in which the distempers of the mind bear a more exact analogy to those which are called bodily, than that aptness which both have to a relapse.

It is, I think, the opinion of Aristotle; or if not, it is the opinion of some wise man, whose authority will be as weighty when it is as old

Thus the hypocrite may be said to be a player; and indeed the Greeks called them both by one and the same name.

Time, however, the best physician of the mind

philosophy and religion may be called the exercises of the mind, and when this is disordered, they are as wholesome as exercise can be to a distempered body.

Now, in reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them men of much greater profundity than they really are. From this complacence, the critics have been emboldened to assume a dictatorial power, and have so far succeeded, that they are now become the masters, and have the assurance to give laws to those authors from whose predecessors they originally received them.

So inconsiderable an object is misery to light minds when it is at any distance.

To these encroachments, time and ignorance, the two great supporters of imposture, gave authority;

he commonly gave them a hint that he knew much more than he thought proper to disclose. This last circumstance alone may, indeed, very well account for his character of wisdom; since men are strangely inclined to worship what they do not understand. A grand secret, upon which several imposers on mankind have totally relied for the success of their frauds.

for, by whatever means you get into the polite circle, when you are once there, it is sufficient merit for you that you are there.

In fact, it is inconceivable what sums may be collected by starving only, and how easy it is for a man to die rich if he will but be contented to live miserable.

men, who in all other instances want common sense, are very Machiavels in the art of loving.

as you are resolved to fall in battle if you can, so I am resolved as firmly to come to no hurt if I can help

when a lady hath once taken a resolution to run to a lover, or to run from him, all obstacles are considered as trifles.

he had discovered that his master and himself, like some prudent fathers and sons, though they travelled together in great friendship, had embraced opposite parties.