Frasi di Henry Fielding

“Non basta che le tue azioni, o meglio le tue intenzioni siano intrinsecamente buone; devi fare in modo che appaiano tali. S'è bello l'interno, devi provvedere a far bello anche l'esterno. Altrimenti la malignità e l'invidia offuscheranno le tue virtù in modo tale che neanche un uomo intelligente e buono […] riuscirà a scorgerne l'interna bellezza. Sia questa, miei giovani lettori, la vostra massima costante: nessuno è mai tanto buono da poter trascurare le regole della prudenza; e la virtù stessa non può apparire bella quando non s'adorni esteriormente di correttezza e di decoro.”

“Esistono certi scrittori religiosi o meglio morali, i quali sostengono che in questo mondo la virtù è la via sicura della felicità e il vizio quella dell'infelicità: dottrina veramente sana e consolante, contro cui abbiamo un'obiezione sola, e cioè che non è vera.”

“Nessuno invero ha mai visto la bellezza in tutto il suo splendore quando non l'abbia vista nel dolore.”

“I seguaci di Esculapio han ragione di avvertire che quando una malattia entra dalla porta, il medico deve essere introdotto dall'altra.”

“Quasi ogni dottore ha la sua malattia favorita.”

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

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

“Love and scandal are the best sweeteneers of tea.”

“It is much easier to make good men wise, than to make bad men good.”

“Some folks rail against other folks, because other folks have what some folks would be glad of.”

“Money is the fruit of evil as often as the root of it.”

“I describe not men, but manners; not an individual, but a species.”

“No one hath seen beauty in its highest lustre who hath never seen it in distress.”

“For I hope my Friends will pardon me, when I declare, I know none of them without a Fault; and I should be sorry if I could imagine, I had any Friend who could not see mine. Forgiveness, of this Kind, we give and demand in Turn.”

“We are as liable to be corrupted by books as we are by companions.”

“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.”

“A crime, which, though perhaps not considered by law as the highest, is in truth and in fact, the blackest sin, which can contaminate the hands, or pollute the soul of man.”

“A good face, they say, is a letter of recommendation. O Nature, Nature, why art thou so dishonest, as ever to send men with these false recommendations into the World?”

“Guilt has very quick ears to an accusation.”

“We must eat to live and live to eat.”

“I have found it; I have discovered the cause of all the misfortunes which befell him. A public school, Joseph, was the cause of all the calamaties which he afterwards suffered. Public schools are the nurseries of all vice and immorality.”

“To whom nothing is given, of him can nothing be required.”

“He was, indeed, in a condition, in which, if reason had interposed, though only to advise, she might have received the answer which one Cleostratus gave many years ago to a silly fellow, who asked him, if he was not ashamed to be drunk? "Are not you," said Cleostratus, "ashamed to admonish a drunken man?" — To say the truth, in a court of justice drunkenness must not be an excuse, yet in a court of conscience it is greatly so.”

“Oh, the roast beef of England,
And old England's roast beef!”

“Oons, sir! do you say that I am drunk? I say, sir, that I am as sober as a judge.”

“One fool at least in every married couple.”

“This story will not go down.”

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

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

“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.”

“When children are doing nothing, they are doing mischief.”

“In reality, the world have payed too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them men of much greater profundity than they really are.”

“All Nature wears one universal grin.”

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