Henry Fielding

“Лошите книги могат да ни покварят също така, както и лошите другари.”

“I look upon the vulgar observation, 'That the devil often deserts his friends, and leaves them in the lurch,' to be a great abuse on that gentleman's character. Perhaps he may sometimes desert those who are only his cup acquaintance; or who, at most, are but half his; but he generally stands by those who are thoroughly his servants, and helps them off in all extremities, till their bargain expires.”

“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.”

“Wisdom, in short, whose lessons have been represented as so hard to learn by those who never were at her school, only teaches us to extend a simple maxim universally known and followed even in the lowest life, a little farther than that life carries it. And this is, not to buy at too dear a price. Now, whoever takes this maxim abroad with him into the grand market of the world, and constantly applies it to honours, to riches, to pleasures, and to every other commodity which that market affords, is, I will venture to affirm, a wise man.”

“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”

“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”

“A good countenance is a letter of recommendation.”

“The great are deceived if they imagine they have appropriated ambition and vanity to themselves. These notable qualities flourish as notably in a country church and churchyard as in the drawing room or in the closet. Schemes have indeed been laid in the vestry, which would hardly disgrace the conclave. Here is a ministry, and here is an opposition. Here are plots and circumventions, parties and factions equal to those which are to be found in courts. Nor are the women here less practiced in the highest feminine arts than their fair superiors in quality and fortune. Here are prudes and coquettes; here are dressing and ogling, falsehood, envy, malice, scandal -- in short everything which is common to the most splendid assembly or politest circle.”

“[...] for the philosophy of Square rendered him superior to all emotions, and he very calmly smoaked his pipe, as was his custom in all broils, unless when he apprehended some danger of having it broke in his mouth.”

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

“He then bespattered the youth with abundance of that language which passes between country gentleman who embrace opposite sides of the question; with frequent applications to him to salute that part which is generally introduced into all controversies that arise among the lower orders of the English gentry at horse-races, cock-matches, and other public places. Allusions to this part are likewise often made for the sake of jest. And here, I believe, the wit is generally misunderstood. In reality, it lies in desiring another to kiss you a-- for having just before threatened ti 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.It may likewise seem surprizing that in the many thousand kind invitations of this sort, which every one who hath conversed with country gentlemen must have heard, no one, I believe, hath ever seen a single instance where the desire hath been complied with; - a great instance of their want of politeness; for in town nothing can be more common than for the finest gentlemen to perform this ceremony every day to their superiors, without having that favour once requested of them.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“A truly elegant taste is generally accompanied with excellency of heart.”

“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.”

“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?”

“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.”

“Fashion is the science of appearance, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I am content; that is a blessing greater than riches; and he to whom that is given need ask no more.”

“All Nature wears one universal grin.”

“We are as liable to be corrupted by books as we are by companions.”

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

“... 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.”

“One fool at least in every married couple.”

“I have often wondered, Sir, [. . .] to observe so few Instances of Charity among Mankind; for tho' the Goodness of a Man's Heart did not incline him to relieve the Distresses of his Fellow-Creatures, methinks the Desire of Honour should move him to it. What inspires a Man to build fine Houses, to purchase fine Furniture, Pictures, Clothes, and other things at a great Expence, but an Ambition to be respected more than other People? Now would not one great Act of Charity, one Instance of redeeming a poor Family from all the Miseries of Poverty, restoring an unfortunate Tradesman by a Sum of Money to the means of procuring a Livelihood by his Industry, discharging an undone Debtor from his Debts or a Goal, or any such Example of Goodness, create a Man more Honour and Respect than he could acquire by the finest House, Furniture, Pictures or Clothes that were ever beheld? For not only the Object himself who was thus relieved, but all who heard the Name of such a Person must, I imagine, reverence him infinitely more than the Possessor of all those other things: which when we so admire, we rather praise the Builder, the Workman, the Painter, the Laceman, the Taylor, and the rest, by whose Ingenuity they are produced, than the Person who by his Money makes them his own.”

“Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.”

“We would bestow some pains here in minutely describing all the mad pranks which Jones played on this occasion could we be well assured that the reader would take the same pains in perusing them, but as we are apprehensive that after all the labour which we should employ in painting this scene the said reader would be very apt to skip it entirely over, we have saved ourself that trouble. To say the truth, we have from this reason alone often done great violence to the luxuriance of our genius, and have left many excellent descriptions out of our work which would otherwise have been in it.”

“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.”

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