Douglas William Jerrold (1803–57) was an English dramatist, journalist, and humorist whose work appeared in prominent journals of his time. None of his plays has survived, even though he had contemporaneous success as a playwright.
Born in London, Jerrold joined the navy as a midshipman in 1813, apprenticed with a printer, became a dramatic author of the Surrey Theatre, and then worked as a compositor on the Sunday Monitor 1819 before becoming its drama critic.
Jerrold achieved success in the theatre with Black-Eyed Susan (1829,) a nautical melodrama that draws on the patriotic tar (sailor) while critiquing authoritarianism in the British Navy.
Jerrold also edited the Illuminated Magazine 1843–44, Jerrold’s Shilling Magazine 1845–48, Douglas Jerrold’s Weekly Newspaper 1846–48 and from 1852 Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper.
From 1841, Jerrold was one of the contributors to the newly launched humorous journal Punch, writing under the pseudonym ‘Q.’ He mastered an exclusive brand of Victorian humor in a series of articles called “Mrs. Caudle’s Curtain Lectures” (1845) for Punch.
A prolific journalist, Jerrold wrote much that is bitter and personal, in sharp contrast to the cheerfulness of his “Curtain Lectures,” which appeared in book form (1846) and regularly reprinted. His comedies, The Bride of Ludgate (1831,) Time Works Wonders (1845,) and The Catspaw (1850,) were less successful. William Makepeace Thackeray illustrated Jerrold’s studies of Men of Character (1838.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Douglas William Jerrold
Slugs crawl and crawl over our cabbages, like the world’s slander over a good name. You may kill them, it is true, but there is the slime.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Treason is like diamonds; there is nothing to be made by the small trader.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Revolution
Some people are so fond of ill-luck that they run half-way to meet it.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Optimism, Luck
The surest way to hit a woman’s heart is to take aim kneeling.
—Douglas William Jerrold
The only athletic sport I ever mastered was backgammon.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Exercise
It takes all sorts of people to make a world.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: World
Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in stranger’s gardens.
—Douglas William Jerrold
A conservative is a man who will not look at the new moon, out of respect for that “ancient institution,” the old one.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Fortunes made in no time are like shirts made in no time; it’s ten to one if they hang long together.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Never have a friend that’s poorer than yourself.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Friendship
Many a man who now lacks shoe-leather would wear golden spurs if knighthood were the reward of worth.
—Douglas William Jerrold
We love peace, but not peace at any price. — There is a peace more destructive of the manhood of living man, than war is destructive of his body. — Chains are worse than bayonets.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Peace
He was so benevolent, so merciful a man that, in his mistaken passion, he would have held an umbrella over a duck in a shower of rain.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Kindness
How beautiful can time with goodness make an old man look.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Age
A strange volume of real life in the daily packet of the postman. Eternal love and instant payment.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Letters
Etiquette has no regard for moral qualities.
—Douglas William Jerrold
The superior man is he who develops in harmonious proportions, his moral, intellectual, and physical nature. This should be the end at which men of all classes should aim, and it is this only which constitutes real greatness.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Man, Intelligence
I never hear the rattling of dice that it does not sound to me like the funeral bell of the whole family.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Self-defense is the clearest of all laws, and for this reason: lawyers didn’t make it.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Lawyers, Defense
Not peace at any price! Chains are worse than bayonets.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Peace
If slander be a snake, it is a winged one. It flies as well as creeps.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Habitual intoxication is the epitome of every crime.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Drunkenness
A coquette is like a recruiting sergeant, always on the lookout for fresh victims.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Blessed be the hand that prepares a pleasure for a child, for there is no saying when and where it may bloom forth.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Children
Wedlock’s like wine, not properly judged of till the second glass.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Marriage
The last word is the most dangerous of infernal machines, and the husband and wife should no more fight to get it than they would struggle for the possession of a lighted bombshell.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Words, Family, Marriage
Reputations, like beavers and cloaks, shall last some people twice the time of others.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Reputation
The character that needs law to mend it, is hardly worth the tinkering.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Character
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