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
Topics: Slander
Habitual intoxication is the epitome of every crime.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Drunkenness
Treason is like diamonds; there is nothing to be made by the small trader.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Revolution
If an earthquake were to engulf England tomorrow, the English would manage to meet and dine somewhere among the rubble, just to celebrate the event.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Britain
Wedlock’s like wine, not properly judged of till the second glass.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Marriage
He is one of those wise philanthropists who, in a time of famine, would vote for nothing, but a supply of toothpicks.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Charity
Conscience, though ever so small a worm while we live, grows suddenly into a serpent on our deathbed.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Conscience
O, glorious laughter! thou man-loving spirit, that for a time doth take the burden from the weary back, that doth lay salve to the weary feet, bruised and cut by flints and shards.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Laughter
Some people are so fond of ill-luck that they run half-way to meet it.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Optimism, Luck
What would women do if they could not cry?—What poor, defenceless creatures they would be.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Tears
Honest bread is very well, it’s butter that makes the temptation.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Etiquette has no regard for moral qualities.
—Douglas William Jerrold
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: Marriage, Family, Words
How beautiful can time with goodness make an old man look.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Age
In all of the wedding cake, hope is the sweetest of plums.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Marriage
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
Topics: Fortune
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
Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in stranger’s gardens.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Many a man who now lacks shoe-leather would wear golden spurs if knighthood were the reward of worth.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Worth
Soldiers looked at as they ought to be are to the world as poppies to corn fields.
—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
A strange volume of real life in the daily packet of the postman. Eternal love and instant payment.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Letters
There is a sanctity in suffering when meekly born. Our duty, though set about by thorns, may still be made a staff, supporting even while it tortures. Cast it away, and, like the prophet’s rod, it changes to a snake.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Trials
Marriage is like wine. It is not properly judged until the second glass.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Marriage
A duellist is only a Cain in high life.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Dress it as we may, feather it, daub it with gold, huzza it, and sing swaggering songs about it, what is war, nine times out of ten, but murder in uniform?
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: War
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
It is a beautiful necessity of our nature to love something.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Love
The surest way to hit a woman’s heart is to take aim kneeling.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Heart
Reputations, like beavers and cloaks, shall last some people twice the time of others.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Topics: Reputation
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