Sarah Fielding Quotes

The words of kindness are more healing to a drooping heart than balm or honey.

Tis this desire of bending all things to our own purposes which turns them into confusion and is the chief source of every error in our lives.

[Allegory] is a flight by which the human wit attempts at one and the same time to investigate two objects, and consequently is fitted only to the most exalted geniuses.

Flattery in courtship is the highest insolence, for whilst it pretends to bestow on you more than you deserve, it is watching an opportunity to take from you what you really have.

I fancied I had some constancy of mind because I could bear my own sufferings, but found through the sufferings of others I could be weakened like a child.

If modesty and candor are necessary to an author in his judgment of his own works, no less are they in his reader.

Agreeable then to my present inclination, I formed the object of my own worship, which was no other than my own understanding.

On the wings of fancy, gentle readers, bear yourselves into the mid-air, where by imagination you may form a large stupendous castle.

I am none of those nonsensical fools that can whine and make romantic love--I leave that to younger brothers. Let my estate speakfor me.

But in all things whether we shall make only a due use of the liberties we have asked, is left entirely to the judicious reader to decide.

The loss of liberty which must attend being a wife was of all things the most horrible to my imagination.

What I mean by love ... is this. A sympathetic liking--excited by fancy, directed by judgment--and to which is joined also a most sincere desire of the good and happiness of its object.

Their virtues lived in their children. The family changed its persons but not its manners, and they continued a blessing to the world from generation to generation.

[T]he judicious reader ought to know what the chief character in any work of the imagination will naturally perform, according to the situation he is thrown into, as well as doth the author himself.

I was condemned to be beheaded, or burnt, as the king pleased; and he was graciously pleased, from the great remains of his love, to choose the mildest sentence.

The supposition that it was possible for any woman to be so mean-spirited as not at least to wish to tear out her rival's eyes was too hard for the digestion of the Cry.