Tobias Smollett Quotes

27 Sourced Quotes

That great Cham of literature, Samuel Johnson.

Tobias Smollett
True courage scorns to vent her prowess in a storm of words; and to the valiant action speaks alone.

Tobias Smollett
Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn
Thy banished peace, thy laurels torn.

Tobias Smollett
Ridiculous modes, invented by ignorance, and adopted by folly.

Tobias Smollett
Every shot has its commission, d'ye see? We must all die at one time, as the saying is.

Tobias Smollett
Nature I'll court in her sequester'd haunts,
By mountain, meadow, streamlet, grove, or cell;
Where the pois'd lark his evening ditty chants,
And health, and peace, and contemplation dwell.

Tobias Smollett
One wit, like a knuckle of ham in soup, gives a zest and flavour to the dish, but more than one serves only to spoil the pottage.

Tobias Smollett
The character of a physician, therefore, not only presupposes natural sagacity, and acquired erudition, but it also implies every delicacy of sentiment, every tenderness of nature, and every virtue of humanity.

Tobias Smollett
A man's opinion of danger varies at different times, in consequence of an irregular tide of animal spirits; and he is actuated by considerations which he dares not avow.

Tobias Smollett
Of this diversion the Scots are so fond, that, when the weather will permit, you may see a multitude of all ranks, from the senator of justice to the lowest tradesman, mingled together, in their shirts, and following the balls with utmost eagerness.

Tobias Smollett
And hearts resolved and hands prepared The blessings they enjoy to guard.

Tobias Smollett
The bread I eat in London, is a deleterious paste, mixed up with chalk, alum, and bone ashes: insipid to the taste, and destructive to the constitution.

Tobias Smollett
Sir, the practice of medicine is one of the most honourable professions exercised among the sons of men; a profession which hath been revered at all periods and in all nations, and even held sacred in the most polished ages of antiquity.

Tobias Smollett
Deep in the frozen regions of the north,
A goddess violated brought thee forth,
Immortal Liberty!

Tobias Smollett
I find my spirits and my health affect each other reciprocally — that is to say, everything that decomposes my mind produces a correspondent disorder in my body; and my bodily complaints are remarkably mitigated by those considerations that dissipate the clouds of mental chagrin.

Tobias Smollett
On Leven's banks, while free to rove, And tune the rural pipe to love, I envied not the happiest swain That ever trod the Arcadian plain. Pure stream! in whose transparent wave My youthful limbs I wont to lave; No torrents stain thy limpid source, No rocks impede thy dimpling course, That sweetly warbles o'er its bed, With white, round, polish'd pebbles spread.

Tobias Smollett
The external appearance of an old cathedral cannot be but displeasing to the eye of every man who has any idea of propriety or proportion, even though he may be ignorant of architecture as a science...

Tobias Smollett
But you and I know, that such a phosphorus is obtained from the most worthless and corrupted materials, such as rotten wood, putrefied veal, and stinking whiting.

Tobias Smollett
I think for my part one half of the nation is mad—and the other not very sound.

Tobias Smollett
Thy fatal shafts unerring move,
I bow before thine altar, Love!

Tobias Smollett
8 June. At London. I am pent up in frowsy lodgings, where there is not room enough to swing a cat.

Tobias Smollett
Hark ye, Clinker, you are a most notorious offender. You stand convicted of sickness, hunger, wretchedness, and want.

Tobias Smollett
Those sculptur'd halls my feet shall never tread,
Where varnish'd vice and vanity combin'd,
To dazzle and seduce, their banners spread,
And forge vile shackles for the free-born mind.

Tobias Smollett
The capital [London] is become an overgrown monster; which, like a dropsical head, will in time leave the body and extremities without nourishment and support.

Tobias Smollett
Thy spirit, Independence, let me share,
Lord of the lion-heart and eagle-eye.
Thy steps I follow with my bosom bare,
Nor heed the storm that howls along the sky.

Tobias Smollett
Writing is all a lottery — I have been a loser by the works of the greatest men of the age.

Tobias Smollett
A mere index hunter, who held the eel of science by the tail.

Tobias Smollett