Thomas Chandler Haliburton Quotes

[Grateful] Cheerfulness is health; its opposite, [ungrateful] melancholy, is disease.

Vanity is not half a bad principle, if it will but stick to legitimate business.

The suspicious parent makes an artful child.

Nicknames stick to people, and the most ridiculous are the most adhesive.

If it were not for a goodly supply of rumors, half true and half false, what would the gossips do?

Ceremony is all backbone.

The happiness of every country depends upon the character of its people, rather than the form of its government.

The memory of past favors is like a rainbow, bright, vivid, and beautiful; but it soon fades away. The in memory of injuries is engraved on the heart, and remains forever.

People have no right to make fools of themselves, unless they have no relations to blush for them.

Mules and human jackasses are proverbially stubborn.

Wise men, like wine, are best when old; pretty women, like bread, are best when young.

A college education shows a man how little other people know.

Fastidiousness is the envelope of indelicacy.

Absurdities die of self-strangulation.

There is the kiss of welcome and of parting, the long, lingering, loving, present one; the stolen, or the mutual one; the kiss of love, of joy, and of sorrow; the seal of promise and receipt of fulfillment.

The bee, though it finds every rose has a thorn, comes back loaded with honey from his rambles; and why should not other tourists do the same?

A woman has two smiles that an angel might envy, the smile that accepts a lover before words are uttered, and the smile that lights on the first born babe, and assures it of a mother's love.

To carry care to bed is to sleep with a pack on your back.

Life ain't all beer and skittles.

A coxcomb is four-fifths affectation and one-fifth vanity.

We can do without any article of luxury we have never had; but when once obtained, it is not in human natur' to surrender it voluntarily.

Look not to a woman's head for her brains, but rather to her heart.

Money is a necessity; so is dirt.

Wishes, like castles in the air, are inexpensive and not taxable.

Impossible desires are the height of unreason.

A temperate anger has virtue in it.

Failures to heroic minds are the stepping stones to success.

Whenever there is authority, there is a natural inclination to disobedience.

A man is never astonished that he doesn't know what another does, but he is surprised at the gross ignorance of the other in not knowing what he does.

Give me a chance, says Stupid, and I will show you. Ten to one he has had his chance already, and neglected it.

Contentment is, after all, simply refined indolence.

Punctuality is the soul of business.