Thomas Love Peacock Quotes

There are two reasons for drinking wine...when you are thirsty, to cure it; the other, when you are not thirsty, to prevent it... prevention is better than cure.

Laughter is pleasant, but the exertion at my age is too much for me.

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

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.

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

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

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longer a poetical audience among the higher class of minds, that moral, political, and physical science have entirely withdrawn from poetry the attention of all whose attention is worth having; and that the poetical reading public being composed of the mere dregs of the intellectual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.

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.

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.

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.

... 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 juice of the grape is the liquid quintessence of concentrated sunbeams.

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

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

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.

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.