Henry Fielding > Quotes

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

“No one hath seen beauty in its highest lustre who hath never seen it in distress.”
― Henry Fielding, Tom Jones

“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, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

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

“It is much easier to make good men wise, than to make bad men good.”
― Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

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

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

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

“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.”
― Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

“A good countenance is a letter of recommendation.”
― Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

“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.”
― Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

“A good heart will, at all times, betray the best head in the world.”
― Henry Fielding

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

“All Nature wears one universal grin.”
― Henry Fielding

“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.”
― Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

“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.”
― Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

“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.”
― Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

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

“One fool at least in every married couple.”
― Henry Fielding

“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, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

“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.”
― Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

“It is a trite but true observation, that examples work more forcibly on the mind than precepts.”
― Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews

“It is as possible for a man to know something without having been at school, as it is to have been at school and to know nothing."

Henry Fielding, Tom Jones”
― Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones a Founding

“It is not enough that your designs, nay that your actions, are intrinsically good, you must take care they shall appear so.”
― Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

“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.”
― Henry Fielding, Tom Jones

“...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.”
― Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

“...her patience was, perhaps, tired out; for this is a virtue which is very apt to be fatigued by exercise.”
― Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

“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?”
― Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

“... 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.”
― Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

“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