THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK

I never failed to convince an audience that the best thing they could do was to go away.

Marriage may often be a stormy lake, but celibacy is almost always a muddy horse pond.

Nothing can be more obvious than that all animals were created solely and exclusively for the use of man.

The waste of plenty is the resource of scarcity.

There are two reasons for drinking: one is, when you are thirsty, to cure it; the other, when you are not thirsty, to prevent it.

Not drunk is he who from the floor - Can rise alone and still drink more; But drunk is They, who prostrate lies, Without the power to drink or rise.

I almost think it is the ultimate destiny of science to exterminate the human race.

A book that furnishes no quotations is no book - it is a plaything.

Names are changed more readily than doctrines, and doctrines more readily than ceremonies.

My quarrel with him is, that his works contain nothing worth quoting; and a book that furnishes no quotations, is me judice, no book,—it is a plaything.

The critic does his utmost to blight genius in its infancy; that which rises in spite of him he will not see; and then he complains of the decline of literature.

But though first love's impassioned blindness Has passed away in colder light, I still have thought of you with kindness, And shall do, till our last goodnight. The ever-rolling silent hours Will bring a time we shall not know, When our young days of gathering flowers Will be an hundred years ago.

... where the Greeks had modesty, we have cant; where they had poetry, we have cant; where they had patriotism, we have cant; where they had anything that exalts, delights, or adorns humanity, we have nothing but cant, cant, cant.

The truth, I am convinced, is that there is no longer a poetical audience among the higher class of minds, that moral, political, and physical science have entirely withdrawn from poetry the attention of all whose attention is worth having; and that the poetical reading public being composed of the mere dregs of the intellectual community, the most sufficing passport to their favour must rest on the mixture of a little easily-intelligible portion of mawkish sentiment with an absolute negation of reason and knowledge.

How troublesome is day! It calls us from our sleep away; It bids us from our pleasant dreams awake, And sends us forth to keep or break Our promises to pay. How troublesome is day!

Clouds on clouds, in volumes driven, curtain round the vault of heaven.

Sir, I have quarrelled with my wife; and a man who has quarrelled with his wife is absolved from all duty to his country.

He kept at true good humor's mark The social flow of pleasure's tide: He never made a brow look dark, Nor caused a tear, but when he died.

They have poisoned the Thames and killed the fish in the river. A little further development of the same wisdom and science will complete the poisoning of the air, and kill the dwellers on the banks. I almost think it is the destiny of science to exterminate the human race.

When Scythrop grew up, he was sent, as usual, to a public school, where a little learning was painfully beaten into him, and from thence to the university, where it was carefully taken out of him.

The mountain sheep are sweeter, But the valley sheep are fatter. We therefore deemed it meeter To carry off the latter.

I like the immaterial world. I like to live among thoughts and images of the past and the possible, and even of the impossible, now and then.