259 Quotes by Henry Fielding

Want compassion is not to be numbered among the general faults of mankind. The black ingredient which fouls our disposition is envy. Hence our eyes, it is to be feared, are seldom turned up to those who are manifestly greater, better, wiser, or happier than ourselves, without some degree of malignity, we commonly look downward on the mean and miserable with sufficient benevolence and pity.

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

Life may as properly be called an art as any other.

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

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

When I'm not thanked at all, I'm thanked enough, I've done my duty, and I've done no more.

Though we may sometimes unintentionally bestow our beneficence on the unworthy, it does not take from the merit of the act. For charity doth not adopt the vices of its objects.

When widows exclaim loudly against second marriages, I would always lay a wager than the man, If not the wedding day, is absolutely fixed on.

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.