Henry Fielding

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.

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

Penny saved is a penny got.

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

Enough is equal to a feast.

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.

Hairbreadth missings of happiness look like the insults of Fortune.

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.

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

The same animal which hath the honour to have some part of his flesh eaten at the table of a duke, may perhaps be degraded in another part,and some of his limbs gibbeted, as it were, in the vilest stall in town.

The only source of the true Ridiculous (as it appears to me) is affectation

A comic writer should of all others be the least excused for deviating from nature, since it may not be always so easy for a serious poet to meet with the great and the admirable; but life every where furnishes an accurate observer with the ridiculous.

Fashion is the great governor of this world; it presides, not only in matters of dress and amusement, but in law, physic, politics, religion, and all other things of the gravest kind; indeed, the wisest of men would be puzzled to give any better reason why particular forms in all these have been at certain times universally received, and at others universally rejected, than that they were in or out of fashion.

We must eat to live, and not live to eat.

Custom may lead a man into many errors; but it justifies none.

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.

It is a good maxim to trust a person entirely or not at all.

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

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

...the act of eating,which hath by several wise men been considered as extremely mean and derogatory from the philosophic dignity, must be in some measure performed by the greatest prince, hero, or philosopher upon earth; nay, sometimes Nature hath been so frolicsome as to exact of these dignified characters a much more exorbitant share of this office than she hath obliged those of the lowest orders to perform.

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

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.

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

It is admirably remarked, by a most excellent writer, that zeal can no more hurry a man to act in direct opposition to itself than a rapid stream can carry a boat against its own current.

Setting down in writing, is a lasting memory.

Most men like in women what is most opposite their own characters.

A wonder lasts but nine days, and then the puppy's eyes are open.

With the latitude of unbounded scurrility, it is easy enough to attain the character of a wit, especially when it is considered how wonderfully pleasant it is to the generality of the public to see the folly of their acquaintance exposed by a third person.

Wit, like hunger, will be with great difficulty restrained from falling on vice and ignorance, where there is great plenty and variety of food.

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