Thomas Love Peacock Quotes

39 Sourced Quotes

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

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

Thomas Love Peacock
Names are changed more readily than doctrines, and doctrines more readily than ceremonies.

Thomas Love Peacock
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. The first is obvious, mechanical, and plebeian; the second is most refined, abstract, prospicient, and canonical.

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

Thomas Love Peacock
My quarrel with him is, that his works contain nothing worth quoting; and a book that furnishes no quotations, is, me judice [in my opinion], no book - it is a plaything.

Thomas Love Peacock
Marriage may often be a stormy lake, but celibacy is almost always a muddy horsepond.

Thomas Love Peacock
But still my fancy wanders free
Through that which might have been.

Thomas Love Peacock
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
Tea, late dinners and the French Revolution. I cannot exactly see the connection of ideas.

Thomas Love Peacock
The critic does his utmost to blight genius in his infancy.

Thomas Love Peacock
If we go on in this way, we shall have a new art of poetry, of which one of the first rules will be: To remember to forget that there are any such things as sunshine and music in the world.

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

Thomas Love Peacock
The present is our own; but while we speak,
We cease from its possession, and resign
The stage we tread on, to another race,
As vain, and gay, and mortal as ourselves.

Thomas Love Peacock
Ancient sculpture is the true school of modesty. But 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.

Thomas Love Peacock
The juice of the grape is the liquid quintessence of concentrated sunbeams.

Thomas Love Peacock
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.

Thomas Love Peacock
Death comes to all. His cold and sapless hand
Waves o'er the world, and beckons us away.
Who shall resist the summons?

Thomas Love Peacock
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!

Thomas Love Peacock
All philosophers who find Some favorite system to their mind, In every point to make it fit Will force all nature to submit.

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

Thomas Love Peacock
Man yields to death; and man's sublimest works
Must yield at length to Time.

Thomas Love Peacock
In a bowl to sea went wise men three,
On a brilliant night of June:
They carried a net, and their hearts were set
On fishing up the moon.

Thomas Love Peacock
Science is one thing, wisdom is another. Science is an edged tool with which men play like children and cut their own fingers.

Thomas Love Peacock
She discovered, when it was too late, that she had mistaken the means for the end — that riches, rightly used, are instruments of happiness, but are not in themselves happiness.

Thomas Love Peacock
'I distinguish the picturesque and the beautiful, and I add to them, in the laying out of grounds, a third and distinct character, which I call unexpectedness.'
'Pray, sir,' said Mr Milestone, 'by what name do you distinguish this character, when a person walks round the grounds for the second time?'

Thomas Love Peacock
Respectable means rich, and decent means poor. I should die if I heard my family called decent.

Thomas Love Peacock
Seamen three! what men be ye?
Gotham's three Wise Men we be.
Whither in your bowl so free?
To rake the moon from out the sea.
The bowl goes trim. The moon doth shine,
And our ballast is old wine.

Thomas Love Peacock
A book that furnishes no quotations is, me judice, no book—it is a plaything.

Thomas Love Peacock
Time is lord of thee:
Thy wealth, thy glory, and thy name are his.

Thomas Love Peacock