Douglas William Jerrold Quotes

Some people are so fond of ill luck that they run halfway to meet it.

A coquette is like a recruiting sergeant, always on the lookout for fresh victims.

A man never so beautifully shows his own strength as when he respects a woman's softness.

There is peace more destructive of the manhood of living man than war is destructive of his material body.

Keep your eyes and ears open, if you desire to get on in the world.

Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest.

Nothing is so beneficial to a young author as the advice of a man whose judgment stands constitutionally at the freezing-point.

Luck, mere luck may make even madness wisdom.

The language of women should be luminous, but not voluminous.

Marriage is like wine. It is not be properly judged until the second glass.

A conservative is a man who will not look at the new moon out of respect for that 'ancient institution' the old one.

That man is thought a dangerous knave, Or zealot plotting crime, Who for advancement of his kind Is wiser than his time.

Virtue is a beautiful thing in woman when they don't go about with it like a child with a drum making all sorts of noise with it.

Troubles are like babies - they only grow by nursing.

A blessed companion is a book! A book that, fitly chosen, is a life-long friend. A book — the unfailing Damon to his loving Pythias. A book that — at a touch — pours its heart into our own.

A man, so to speak, who is not able to bow to his own conscience every morning is hardly in a condition to respectfully salute the world at any other time of the day.

Habitual intoxication is the epitome of every crime.

Reputations, like beavers and cloaks, shall last some people twice the time of others.

It takes all sorts of people to make a world.

We love peace, as we abhor pusillanimity; but not peace at any price.

There are some people as obtuse in recognizing an argument as they are in appreciating wit. You couldn't drive it into their heads with a hammer.

Religion is in the heart, not in the knees.

A creature undefiled by the taint of the world, unvexed by its injustice, unwearied by its hollow pleasures; a being fresh from the source of light, with something of its universal lustre in it. If childhood be this, how holy the duty to see that in its onward growth it shall be no other!

Literature, like a gypsy, to be picturesque, should be a little ragged.

Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers' gardens.

Don't buy a single vote more than necessary.

He was so benevolent, so merciful a man that, in his mistaken passion, he would have held an umbrella over a duck in a shower of rain.

Etiquette has no regard for moral qualities.

Rogues are prone to find things before they are lost.

Love the sea? I dote upon it--from the beach.

Malice blunts the point of wit.

As for the brandy, "nothing extenuate"; and the water, put nought in in malice.

Quality, not quantity, is my measure.

A man is in no danger so long as he talks his love; but to write it is to impale himself on his own pothooks.

Man owes two solemn debts--one to society, and one to-nature. It is only when he pays the second that he covers the first.

Gravity is more suggestive than convincing.

Humor is the harmony of the heart.

Women, somehow, have the same fear of witty men as of fireworks.

Dogmation is puppyism come to its full growth.

There are a good many pious people who are as careful of their religion as of their best service of china, only using it on holy occasions, for fear it should get chipped or flawed in working-day wear.

Even the worse of jobs has their pleasures, if I were a grave digger or a hangmen, there are some people I could work for with a great deal of enjoyment.

We are all slaves to the shining metal.

Fortunes made in no time are like shirts made in no time; it's ten to one if they hang long together.

The only athletic sport I ever mastered was backgammon.

He is one of those wise philanthropists who, in a time of famine, would vote for nothing but a supply of toothpicks.

Slugs crawl and crawl over our cabbages, like the world's slander over a good name. You may kill them, it is true; but there is the slime.

Wishes, at least, are the easy pleasures of the poor.

Wits, like drunken men with swords, are apt to draw their steel upon their best acquaintances.