Top 180 Henry Fielding Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “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.”

— Henry Fielding

102. “A newspaper consists of just the same number of words, whether there be any news in it or not.”

— Henry Fielding

103. “However exquisitely human nature may have been described by writers, the true practical system can be learned only in the world.”

— Henry Fielding

104. “There is an insolence which none but those who themselves deserve contempt can bestow, and those only who deserve no contempt can bear.”

— Henry Fielding

105. “Prudence is a duty which we owe ourselves, and if we will be so much our own enemies as to neglect it, we are not to wonder if the world is deficient in discharging their duty to us; for when a man lays the foundation of his own ruin, others too often are apt to build upon it.”

— Henry Fielding

106. “Petition me no petitions, sir, to-day; Let other hours be set apart for business. To-day it is our pleasure to be drunk; And this our queen shall be as drunk as we.”

— Henry Fielding

107. “Hairbreadth missings of happiness look like the insults of Fortune.”

— Henry Fielding

108. “Yes, I had two strings to my bow; both golden ones, egad! and both cracked.”

— Henry Fielding

109. “There are persons of that general philanthropy and easy tempers, which the world in contempt generally calls good-natured, who seem to be sent into the world with the same design with which men put little fish into a pike pond, in order only to be devoured by that voracious water-hero.”

— Henry Fielding

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

— Henry Fielding

111. “Commend a fool for his wit, or a rogue for his honesty and he will receive you into his favour.”

— Henry Fielding

112. “Love may be likened to a disease in this respect, that when it is denied a vent in one part, it will certainly break out in another; hence what a woman’s lips often conceal, her eyes, her blushes, and many little involuntary actions betray.”

— Henry Fielding

113. “Ingratitude never so thoroughly pierces the human breast as when it proceeds from those in whose behalf we have been guilty of transgressions.”

— Henry Fielding

114. “In a debate, rather pull to pieces the argument of thy antagonists than offer him any of thy own; for thus thou wilt fight him in his own country.”

— Henry Fielding

115. “Gravity is the best cloak for sin in all countries.”

— Henry Fielding

116. “There are two considerations which always imbitter the heart of an avaricious man – the one is a perpetual thirst after more riches, the other the prospect of leaving what he has already acquired.”

— Henry Fielding

117. “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

118. “Great vices are the proper objects of our detestation, smaller faults of our pity, but affectation appears to be the only true source of the ridiculous.”

— Henry Fielding

119. “There is perhaps no surer mark of folly, than to attempt to correct natural infirmities of those we love.”

— Henry Fielding

120. “What was said by the Latin poet of labor – that it conquers all things – is much more true when applied to impudence.”

— Henry Fielding

121. “Wisdom is the talent of buying virtuous pleasures at the cheapest rate.”

— Henry Fielding

122. “There is nothing a man of good sense dreads in a wife so much as her having more sense than himself.”

— Henry Fielding

123. “It is not from nature, but from education and habits, that our wants are chiefly derived.”

— Henry Fielding

124. “There cannot be a move glorious object in creation than a human being replete with benevolence, meditating in what manner he might render himself most acceptable to his Creator by doing most good to His creatures.”

— Henry Fielding

125. “As a conquered rebellion strengthens a government, or as health is more perfectly established by recovery from some diseases; so anger, when removed, often gives new life to affection.”

— Henry Fielding

126. “Conscience – the only incorruptible thing about us.”

— Henry Fielding

127. “Sensuality not only debases both body and mind, but dulls the keen edge of pleasure.”

— Henry Fielding

128. “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

129. “There is scarcely any man, how much soever he may despise the character of a flatterer, but will condescend in the meanest manner to flatter himself.”

— Henry Fielding

130. “Scarcely one person in a thousand is capable of tasting the happiness of others.”

— Henry Fielding

131. “Guilt, on the contrary, like a base thief, suspects every eye that beholds him to be privy to his transgressions, and every tongue that mentions his name to be proclaiming them.”

— Henry Fielding

132. “Thirst teaches all animals to drink, but drunkenness belongs only to man.”

— Henry Fielding

133. “There is nothing so useful to man in general, nor so beneficial to particular societies and individuals, as trade. This is that alma mater, at whose plentiful breast all mankind are nourished.”

— Henry Fielding

134. “To the composition of novels and romances, nothing is necessary but paper, pens, and ink, with the manual capacity of using them.”

— Henry Fielding

135. “To the generality of men you cannot give a stronger hint for them to impose upon you than by imposing upon yourself.”

— Henry Fielding

136. “When I’m not thanked at all, I’m thanked enough.”

— Henry Fielding

137. “Some general officers should pay a stricter regard to truth than to call the depopulating other countries the service of their own.”

— Henry Fielding

138. “When the effects of female jealousy do not appear openly in their proper colours of rage and fury, we may suspect that mischievous passion to be at work privately, and attempting to undermine, what it doth not attack above-ground.”

— Henry Fielding

139. “Clergy are men as well as other folks.”

— Henry Fielding

140. “He that dies before sixty, of a cold or consumption, dies, in reality, by a violent death.”

— Henry Fielding

141. “The highest friendship must always lead us to the highest pleasure.”

— Henry Fielding

142. “Human life very much resembles a game of chess: for, as in the latter, while a gamester is too attentive to secure himself very strongly on one side of the board, he is apt to leave an unguarded opening on the other, so doth it often happen in life.”

— Henry Fielding

143. “There are those who never reason on what they should do, but what they have done; as if Reason had her eyes behind, and could only see backwards.”

— Henry Fielding

144. “LOVE: A word properly applied to our delight in particular kinds of food; sometimes metaphorically spoken of the favorite objects of all our appetites.”

— Henry Fielding

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

— Henry Fielding

146. “Giving comfort under affliction requires that penetration into the human mind, joined to that experience which knows how to soothe, how to reason, and how to ridicule; taking the utmost care never to apply those arts improperly.”

— Henry Fielding

147. “Dancing begets warmth, which is the parent of wantonness. It is, Sir, the great grandfather of cuckoldom.”

— Henry Fielding

148. “Dignity and love were never yet boon companions.”

— Henry Fielding

149. “It may be laid down as a general rule, that no woman who hath any great pretensions to admiration is ever well pleased in a company where she perceives herself to fill only the second place.”

— Henry Fielding

150. “Some virtuous women are too liberal in their insults to a frail sister; but virtue can support itself without borrowing any assistance from the vices of other women.”

— Henry Fielding