Top 180 Henry Fielding Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Success is a fruit of slow growth.”

— Henry Fielding

2. “We must eat to live, and not live to eat.”

— Henry Fielding

3. “Handsome is that handsome does.”

— Henry Fielding

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

— Henry Fielding

5. “Where the law ends tyranny begins.”

— Henry Fielding

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

— Henry Fielding

7. “What’s vice today may be virtue, tomorrow.”

— Henry Fielding

8. “The slander of some people is as great a recommendation as the praise of others.”

— Henry Fielding

9. “The devil take me, if I think anything but love to be the object of love.”

— Henry Fielding

10. “Great joy, especially after a sudden change of circumstances, is apt to be silent, and dwells rather in the heart than on the tongue.”

— Henry Fielding

11. “It is much easier to make good men wise, than to make bad men good.”

— Henry Fielding

12. “It is a trite but true Observation, that Examples work more forcibly on the Mind than Precepts: and if this be just in what is odious and blameable, it is more strongly so in what is amiable and praiseworthy.”

— Henry Fielding

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

— Henry Fielding

14. “Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it, a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not.”

— Henry Fielding

15. “A lottery is a taxation on all of the fools in creation.”

— Henry Fielding

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

— Henry Fielding

17. “Make money your god, and it will plague you like the devil.”

— Henry Fielding

18. “Let no man be sorry he has done good, because others concerned with him have done evil! If a man has acted right, he has done well, though along; if wrong, the sanction of all mankind will not justify him.”

— Henry Fielding

19. “No acquisitions of guilt can compensate the loss of that solid inward comfort of mind, which is the sure companion of innocence and virtue; nor can in the least balance the evil of that horror and anxiety which, in their room, guilt introduces into our bosoms.”

— Henry Fielding

20. “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

21. “Thy modesty ’s a candle to thy merit.”

— Henry Fielding

22. “The greatest part of mankind labor under one delirium or another; and Don Quixote differed from the rest, not in madness, but the species of it. The covetous, the prodigal, the superstitious, the libertine, and the coffee-house politician, are all Quixotes in their several ways.”

— Henry Fielding

23. “When I mention religion I mean the Christian religion; and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion; and not only the Protestant religion, but the Church of England.”

— Henry Fielding

24. “A good man therefore is a standing lesson to us all.”

— Henry Fielding

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

— Henry Fielding

26. “Fear hath the common fault of a justice of peace, and is apt to conclude hastily from every slight circumstance, without examining the evidence on both sides.”

— Henry Fielding

27. “Good-breeding is not confined to externals, much less to any particular dress or attitude of the body; it is the art of pleasing, or contributing as much as possible to the ease and happiness of those with whom you converse.”

— Henry Fielding

28. “It is with jealousy as with the gout. When such distempers are in the blood, there is never any security against their breaking out, and that often on the slightest occasions, and when least suspected.”

— Henry Fielding

29. “A treacherous friend is the most dangerous enemy.”

— Henry Fielding

30. “A wonder lasts but nine days, and then the puppy’s eyes are open.”

— Henry Fielding

31. “Guilt has very quick ears to an accusation.”

— Henry Fielding

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

— Henry Fielding

33. “I describe not men, but manners; not an individual, but a species.”

— Henry Fielding

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

— Henry Fielding

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

— Henry Fielding

36. “Wine and youth are fire upon fire.”

— Henry Fielding

37. “Public schools are the nurseries of all vice and immorality.”

— Henry Fielding

38. “A good countenance is a letter of recommendation.”

— Henry Fielding

39. “Wicked companions invite us to hell.”

— Henry Fielding

40. “Neither great poverty nor great riches will hear reason.”

— Henry Fielding

41. “Never trust the man who has reason to suspect that you know he has injured you.”

— Henry Fielding

42. “Money is the fruit of evil, as often as the root of it.”

— Henry Fielding

43. “The prudence of the best heads is often defeated by tenderness of the best hearts.”

— Henry Fielding

44. “Affectation proceeds from one of these two causes, – vanity or hypocrisy; for as vanity puts us on affecting false characters, in order to purchase applause; so hypocrisy sets us on an endeavor to avoid censure, by concealing our vices under an appearance of their opposite virtues.”

— Henry Fielding

45. “What is commonly called love, namely the desire of satisfying a voracious appetite with a certain quantity of delicate white human flesh.”

— Henry Fielding

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

— Henry Fielding

47. “It hath been often said, that it is not death, but dying, which is terrible.”

— Henry Fielding

48. “The blackest ink of fate are sure my lot, And when fate writ my name it made a blot.”

— Henry Fielding

49. “Riches without charity are nothing worth. They are a blessing only to him who makes them a blessing to others.”

— Henry Fielding

50. “What a silly fellow must he be who would do the devil’s work for free.”

— Henry Fielding