Quotations and Poems

» Absence » “When delicate and feeling souls are separated, there is not a feature in the sky, not a movement of the elements, not an aspiration of the breeze, but hints some cause for a lover’s apprehension.”

» Books and Reading » “Here, my dear Lucy, hide these books. Quick, quick! Fling ”Peregrine Pickle” under the toilette –throw ”Roderick Random” into the closet –put ”The Innocent Adultery” into ”The Whole Duty of Man”; thrust ”Lord Aimworth” under the sofa! cram ”Ovid” behind the bolster; there –put ”The Man of Feeling” into your pocket. Now for them.”

» Conflict » “Remember that when you meet your antagonist, to do everything in a mild agreeable manner. Let your courage be keen, but, at the same time, as polished as your sword.”

» Conscience » “Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics.”

» Coward and Cowardice » “My valor is certainly going, it is sneaking off! I feel it oozing out as it were, at the palms of my hands!”

» Critics and Criticism » “For if there is anything to one’s praise, it is foolish vanity to be gratified at it, and if it is abuse — why one is always sure to hear of it from one damned good-natured friend or another!”

» Debt » “You know it is not my interest to pay the principal, or my principal to pay the interest.”

» Failure » “The surest way to fail is not to determine to succeed.”

» Fathers » “An unforgiving eye, and a damned disinheriting countenance!”

» Gossip » “When of a gossiping circle it was asked, What are they doing? The answer was, Swapping lies.”

» Humor » “The right honorable gentlemen is indebted to his memory for his jokes and his imagination for his facts.”

» Infatuation » “Nay, but Jack, such eyes! such eyes! so innocently wild! so bashfully irresolute! Not a glance but speaks and kindles some thought of love! Then, Jack, her cheeks! her cheeks, Jack! so deeply blushing at the insinuations of her tell-tale eyes! Then, Jack, her lips! O, Jack, lips smiling at their own discretion! and, if not smiling, more sweetly pouting — more lovely in sullenness! Then, Jack, her neck! O, Jack, Jack!”

» Learning » “I would by no means wish a daughter of mine to be a progeny of learning; I don’t think so much learning becomes a young woman: for instance, I would never let her meddle with Greek, or Hebrew, or algebra, or simony, or fluxions, or paradoxes, or such inflammatory branches of learning; nor will it be necessary for her to handle any of your mathematical, astronomical, diabolical instruments; but… I would send her, at nine years old, to a boarding-school, in order to learn a little ingenuity and artifice: then, sir, she would have a supercilious knowledge in accounts, and, as she grew up, I would have her instructed in geometry, that she might know something of the contagious countries: this is what I would have a woman know; and I don’t think there is a superstitious article in it.”

» Libraries » “Madam, a circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge; it blossoms through the year. And depend on it that they who are so fond of handling the leaves, will long for the fruit at last.”

» Malice » “There’s no possibility of being witty without a little ill-nature — the malice of a good thing is the barb that makes it stick.”

» Manners » “He is the very pineapple of politeness!”

» Marriage » “‘Tis safest in matrimony to begin with a little aversion.”

» Memory » “He is indebted to his memory for his jests and to his imagination for his facts.”

» Modesty » “Modesty is a quality in a lover more praised by the women than liked.”

» Pity » “Pity those who nature abuses; never those who abuse nature.”

» Sincerity » “Those that vow the most are the least sincere.”

» Swearing » “Ay, ay, the best terms will grow obsolete: damns have had their day.”

» Temper » “Take care; you know I am compliance itself, when I am not thwarted! No one more easily led, when I have my own way; but don’t put me in a frenzy.”

» Theater » “I open with a clock striking, to beget an awful attention in the audience — it also marks the time, which is four o clock in the morning, and saves a description of the rising sun, and a great deal about gilding the eastern hemisphere.”

» Widowhood » “There is nothing on earth so easy as to forget, if a person chooses to set about it. I’m sure I have as much forgot your poor, dear uncle, as if he had never existed; and I thought it my duty to do so.”

» Writers and Writing » “Easy writings curse is hard reading.”