18th-century Novelist Quotes

Nations and men are only the best when they are the gladdest, and deserve heaven when they enjoy it.

The only impregnable citadel of virtue is religion; for there is no bulwark of mere morality, which some temptation may not overtop or undermine, and destroy.

The highest wisdom and the highest genius have been invariably accompanied with cheerfulness. We have sufficient proofs on record that Shakespeare and Socrates were the most festive companions.

Thomas Love Peacock

The total and universal want of manners, both in males and females, is... remarkable... that polish which removes the coarser and rougher parts of our nature is unknown and undreamed of.

Frances Trollope

Authorship is a mania to conquer which no reasons are sufficiently strong.

I feeling pretty sensibly that it was not going by the right door and knocking desperately at the wrong one, I told him of it: "Pooh," says he "my dear, any port in a storm."

For parents to restrain the inclinations of their children in marriage is an usurped power.

In a word, he would say, error was error, — no matter where it fell, — whether in a fraction, — or a pound, — 'twas alike fatal to truth, and she was kept down at the bottom of her well, as inevitably by mistake in the dust of a butterfly's win, — as in the disk of the sun, the moon, and all the stars of heaven put together.

Laurence Sterne