Henry Fielding (1707–54) was an English novelist. He established the genre’s inventive purpose as a massive criticism of life and culture.
Educated at Eton and Leiden, Fielding wrote numerous satirical burlesques including The Historical Register for 1736 (1737.) Such sharp political satires of Prime Minister Robert Walpole’s government provoked the introduction of censorship in England. The ensuing Licensing Act of 1737 effectively ended Fielding’s career as a dramatist.
Fielding then turned to write picaresque novels, notably Joseph Andrews (1742) and Tom Jones (1749.) The latter is considered the first undisputed masterpiece of English novels. The central character is a charming, uninhibited youthful man of fierce temper, who pursues true love through contemporary Britain in a sequence of contemptible and hilarious adventures.
In addition to his literary genius, Fielding holds a significant place in the history of law enforcement. In 1749, he used his authority as a magistrate to institute the Bow Street Runners, arguably London’s first professional police force.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Henry Fielding
It is a good maxim to trust a person entirely or not at all.
—Henry Fielding
Topics: Trust
There is not in human nature a more odious disposition than a proneness to contempt, which is a mixture of pride and ill-nature. Nor is there any which more certainly denotes a bad disposition; for in a good and benign temper, there can be no room for it.—It is the truest symptom of a base and bad heart.
—Henry Fielding
Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it, a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not.
—Henry Fielding
Topics: Vision, Adversity, Difficulties
O Vanity, how little is thy force acknowledged, or thy operations discerned! How wantonly dost thou deceive mankind, under different disguises!—Sometimes thou dost wear the face of pity; sometimes of generosity; nay, thou hast the assurance to put on those glorious ornaments which belong only to heroic virtue.
—Henry Fielding
Topics: Vanity
Thwackum was for doing justice, and leaving mercy to Heaven.
—Henry Fielding
Topics: Punishment
Wicked companions invite and lure us to hell.
—Henry Fielding
Guilt hath very quick ears to an accusation.
—Henry Fielding
Topics: Guilt
The prudence of the best heads is often defeated by the tenderness of the best of hearts.
—Henry Fielding
Topics: Prudence, Kindness
There cannot be a more glorious object in creation than a human being replete with benevolence, meditating in what manner he may render himself most acceptable to the Creator by doing good to his creatures.
—Henry Fielding
Topics: Benevolence
Domestic happiness is the end of almost all our pursuits, and the common reward of all our pains.—When men find themselves forever barred from this delightful fruition they are lost to all industry, and grow careless of their worldly affairs.—Thus they become bad subjects, bad relations, bad friends, and bad men.
—Henry Fielding
As a great part of the uneasiness of matrimony arises from mere trifles, it would be wise in every young married man to enter into an agreement with his wife that in all disputes the party who was most convinced they were right should always surrender the victory. By this means both would be more forward to give up the cause.
—Henry Fielding
Topics: Marriage
Thy modesty’s a candle to thy merit.
—Henry Fielding
Topics: Life
Neither great poverty, nor great riches will hear reason.
—Henry Fielding
Topics: Reason
The man who is inquisitive into the secrets of your affairs, with which he has no concern, should be an object of your caution.—Men no more desire another’s secrets to conceal them, than they would another’s purse for the pleasure only of carrying it.
—Henry Fielding
There are those who never reason on what they should do, but on what they have done; as if reason had her eyes behind, and could only see backward.
—Henry Fielding
Topics: Reason
Superstition renders a man a fool, and scepticism makes him mad.
—Henry Fielding
Topics: Superstition
Most men like in women what is most opposite their own characters.
—Henry Fielding
Topics: Woman
The greatest part of mankind labor under one delirium or another; and Don Quixote differed from the rest, not in madness, but in the species of it.—The covetous, the prodigal, the superstitious the libertine, and the coffee-house politician, are all Quixotes in their several way.
—Henry Fielding
Wine and youth are fire upon fire.
—Henry Fielding
Topics: Wine
Fashion is the great governor of the 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 men would be puzzled to give any better reason why particular forms in all these have been at certain times universally received, and at other times universally rejected, than that they were in, or out of fashion.
—Henry Fielding
Topics: Fashion
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.
—Henry Fielding
Topics: Marriage
It is a trite but true definition that examples work more forcibly on the mind than precepts.
—Henry Fielding
Topics: Example
We are as liable to be corrupted by books, as by companions.
—Henry Fielding
Topics: Reading, Books
Worth begets in base minds, envy; in great souls, emulation.
—Henry Fielding
Topics: Worth
A rich man without charity is a rogue; and perhaps it would be no difficult matter to prove that he is also a fool.
—Henry Fielding
Topics: Charity
In debate, rather pull to pieces the argument of thine antagonist, than offer him any of thine own; for thus thou will fight him in his own country.
—Henry Fielding
There is nothing a man of good sense dreads in a wife so much as her having more sense than himself.
—Henry Fielding
Topics: Common Sense
It is the nature of some minds to insult and tyrannize over little people, this being the means they use to recompense themselves for their extreme servility and condescension to their superiors.—Slaves and flatterers exact the same taxes on all below them which they pay to all above them.
—Henry Fielding
It hath often been said that it is not death but dying that is terrible.
—Henry Fielding
Topics: Dying, Death
Distance of time and place generally cure what they seem to aggravate; and taking leave of our friends resembles taking leave of the world, of which it has been said, that it is not death, but dying, which is terrible.
—Henry Fielding
Topics: Death, Absence, Dying
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