Thomas Chandler Haliburton Quotes

Life ain't all beer and skittles.

Favoritism manifests itself in all departments of government, public and private. It is the harder to avoid, because it is so natural.

Punctuality is the soul of business.

Failures to heroic minds are the stepping stones to success.

Mules and human jackasses are proverbially stubborn.

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

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?

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

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.

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

If you have a thrust to make at your friend's expense, do it gracefully, it is all the more effective. Some one says the reproach that is delivered with hat in hand is the most telling.

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

Absurdities die of self-strangulation.

Be it remembered that we command nature, as it were, by obeying nature's laws; so the woman who would control her husband does so through obedience.

What a sight there is in that "smile!" it changes like a chameleon. There is a vacant smile, a cold smile, a smile of hate, a satiric smile, an affected smile; but, above all, a smile of love.

Some people have a perfect genius for doing nothing, and doing it assiduously.

There is music wherever there is harmony, order, or proportion.

The suspicious parent makes an artful child.

Women forgive injuries, but never forget slights.

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

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

Just what part of meow don't you understand?

There is nothing like fun, is there? I haven't any myself, but I do like it in others.

Hope is a pleasant acquaintance, but an unsafe friend.

When a man is wrong and won't admit is, he always gets angry.

Contentment is, after all, simply refined indolence.

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

Hurry is only admissible in catching flies.

Ceremony is all backbone.

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

No one is rich whose expenditures exceed his means, and no one is poor whose incomings exceed his outgoings.

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

A temperate anger has virtue in it.

Fact is stranger than fiction.

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.

An uncontrolled imagination may become as surely intoxicated by overindulgence as a toper may do bodily with strong drink.

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

Hope is a pleasant acquaintance, but an unsafe friend, not the man for your banker, though he may do for a traveling companion.

Over-confidence is as evil as undue anxiety.

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

Punctuality is the sole of business.

Fastidiousness is the envelope of indelicacy.

Mothers can get weaned as well as babies.

I have learnt a good deal from my own talk.

We reckon hours and minutes to be dollars and cents.

Avarice fills its purse at the expense of its belly.

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.

Impossible desires are the height of unreason.

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

Nature's bank-dividends.