Henry Fielding

There is not in the universe a more ridiculous, nor more contemptible animal, than a proud clergyman.

A good face, they say, is a letter of recommendation. O Nature, Nature, why art thou so dishonest, as ever to send men with these false recommendations into the World?

One fool at least in every married couple.

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

These are called the pious frauds of friendship.

Guilt has very quick ears to an accusation.

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

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

To speak a bold truth, I am, after much mature deliberation, inclined to suspect that the public voice hath, in all ages, done much injustice to Fortune, and hath convicted her of many facts in which she had not the least concern.

When children are doing nothing, they are doing mischief.

Republic of letters.

Hairbreadth missings of happiness look like the insults of Fortune.

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

The dignity of history.

Indeed, it may be doubted whether Ulysses, who by the way seems to have had the best stomach of all the heroes in that eating poem of the Odyssey, ever made a better meal.

At last the Ocean, that hospitable friend to the wretched, opened her capacious arms to receive him.

Distinction without a difference.

In reality, the world have payed too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them men of much greater profundity than they really are.

Can any man have a higher notion of the rule of right and the eternal fitness of things?

Thwackum was for doing justice, and leaving mercy to heaven.

Every physician almost hath his favorite disease.

. . . for 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.

Reader, I think proper, before we proceed any farther 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..."

...the excellence of the mental entertainment consists less in the subject than in the author's skill in well dressing it up.