Thomas Love Peacock Quotes

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

Miss Marionetta Celestina O'Carroll was a very blooming and accomplished young lady. Being a compound of the Allegro Vivace of the O'Carrolls, and of the Andante Doloroso of the Glowries, she exhibited in her own character all the diversities of an April sky. Her hair was light-brown; her eyes hazel, and sparkling with a mild but fluctuating light; her features regular; her lips full,

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.

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.

Mr Flosky suddenly stopped: he found himself unintentionally trespassing within the limits of common sense.

I like the immaterial world. I like to live among thoughts and images of the past and the possible, and even of the impossible, now and then.

Surely not without reason, when pirates, highwaymen, and other varieties of the extensive genus Marauder, are the only beau ideal of the active, as splenetic and railing misanthropy is of the speculative energy.

Raven: The Reverend Mr Larynx has been called off on duty, to marry or bury (I don't know which) some unfortunate person or persons, at Claydyke: ...

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

A mere wilderness, as you see, even now in December; but in summer a complete nursery of briers, a forest of thistles, a plantation of nettles, without any live stock but goats, that have eaten up all the bark of the trees. Here you see is the pedestal of a statue, with only half a leg and four toes remaining: there were many here once. When I was a boy, I used to sit every day on the shoulders of Hercules: what became of him I have never been able to ascertain. Neptune has been lying these seven years in the dust-hole; Atlas had his head knocked off to fit him for propping a shed; and only the day before yesterday we fished Bacchus out of the horse-pond.

There is a time for every thing under the sun. You may as well dine first, and be miserable afterwards.

Modern literature is a north-east wind
a blight of the human soul. I take credit to myself for having helped to make it so. The way to produce fine fruit is to blight the flower. You call this a paradox. Marry, so be it.

A book that furnishes no quotations is no book - it is a plaything.

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

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; and he was sent home like a well-threshed ear of corn, with nothing in his head.

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.

The explanation, said Mr Glowry, is very satisfactory. The Great Mogul has taken lodgings at Kensington, and the external part of the ear is a cartilaginous funnel.

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

What do we see by [our enlightened age] which our ancestors saw not, and which at the same time is worth seeing? We see a hundred men hanged, where they saw one. We see five hundred transported, where they saw one. We see five thousand in the workhouse, where they saw one ... We see children perishing in manufactories, where they saw them flourishing in the fields. We see prisons, where they saw castles. We see masters, where they saw representatives. In short, they saw true men, where we see false knaves. They saw Milton, and we see Mr. Sackbut.

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.

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.

The waste of plenty is the resource of scarcity.

We wither from our youth; we gasp with unslaked thirst for unattainable good; lured from the first to the last by phantoms - love, fame, ambition, avarice - all idle, and all ill - one meteor of many names, that vanishes in the smoke of death.[8]

Time, the foe of man's dominion,
Wheels around in ceaseless flight,
Scattering from his hoary pinion
Shades of everlasting night.

My thoughts by night are often filled With visions false as fair: For in the past alone, I build My castles in the air.

The whole party followed, with the exception of Scythrop, who threw himself into his arm-chair, crossed his left foot over his right knee, placed the hollow of his left hand on the interior ancle of his left leg, rested his right elbow on the elbow of the chair, placed the ball of his right thumb against his right temple, curved the forefinger along the upper part of his forehead, rested the point of the middle finger on the bridge of his nose, and the points of the two others on the lower part of the palm, fixed his eyes intently on the veins in the back of his left hand, and sat in this position like the immoveable Theseus, who, as is well known to many who have not been at college, and to some few who have, sedet, oeternumque sedebit. We hope the admirers of the minitiae in poetry and romance will appreciate this accurate description of a pensive attitude.

On the top of Cadair Idris,
I felt how happy a man might be
with a little money and a sane intellect,
and reflected with astonishment and pity
on the madness of the multitude.

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

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.

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

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