Thomas Love Peacock Quotes & Sayings

I perceive , Sir , you are one of those who love an authority more than a reason — Thomas Love Peacock

There are two reasons for drinking: one is, when you are thirsty, to cure it; the other, when you are not thirsty, to prevent it. — Thomas Love Peacock

Now I should rather suppose there is no reason for it: it is the fashion to be unhappy. To have a reason for being so would be exceedingly commonplace: to be so without any is the province of genius. — Thomas Love Peacock

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

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. — Thomas Love Peacock

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. — Thomas Love Peacock

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. — Thomas Love Peacock

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] — Thomas Love Peacock

In politics, they have ran with the hare and hunted with the hound. In criticism, they have, knowingly and unblushingly, given false characters, both for good and for evil; sticking at no art of misrepresentation, to clear out of the field of literature all who stood in the way of the interests of their own clique. They have never allowed their own profound ignorance of anything (Greek for instance) to throw even an air of hesitation into their oracular decision on the matter. They set an example of profligate contempt for truth, of which the success was in proportion to the effrontery; and when their prosperity had filled the market with competitors, they cried out against their own reflected sin, as if they had never committed it, or were entitled to a monopoly of it. The latter, I rather think, was what they wanted. Mr. — Thomas Love Peacock

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. — Thomas Love Peacock

The juice of the grape is the liquid quintessence of concentrated sunbeams. — Thomas Love Peacock

I almost think it is the ultimate destiny of science to exterminate the human race. — Thomas Love Peacock

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. — Thomas Love Peacock

And as for the human mind, I deny that it is the same in all men. I hold that there is every variety of natural capacity from the idiot to Newton and Shakespeare; the mass of mankind, midway between these extremes, being blockheads of different degrees; education leaving them pretty nearly as it found them, with this single difference, that it gives a fixed direction to their stupidity, a sort of incurable wry neck to the thing they call their understanding. — Thomas Love Peacock

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, — Thomas Love Peacock

A book that furnishes no quotations is no book - it is a plaything. — Thomas Love Peacock

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. — Thomas Love Peacock

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. — Thomas Love Peacock

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. — Thomas Love Peacock

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

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

The waste of plenty is the resource of scarcity. — Thomas Love Peacock

The Squire flew over to Mr Escot. "I told you," said he, "I would settle him: but there is a very hard condition attached to his compliance."
"I submit to it," said Mr Escot, "be it what it may."
"Nothing less," said Squire Headlong, "than the absolute and unconditional surrender of the skull of Cadwallader."
"I resign it," said Mr Escot.
"The skull is yours," said the squire, skipping over to Mr Cranium.
"I am perfectly satisfied," said Mr Cranium.
"The lady is yours," said the squire, skipping back to Mr Escot.
"I am the happiest man alive," said Mr Escot. — Thomas Love Peacock

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. — Thomas Love Peacock

But still my fancy wanders free
Through that which might have been. — Thomas Love Peacock

Names are changed more readily than doctrines, and doctrines more readily than ceremonies. — Thomas Love Peacock

Raven: The Honourable Mr Listless is gone. He declared that, what with family quarrels in the morning, and ghosts at night, he could get neither sleep nor peace; and that the agitation was too much for his nerves: though Mr Glowry assured him that the ghost was only poor Crow walking in his sleep, and that the shroud and bloody turban were a sheet and a red nightcap. — Thomas Love Peacock

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. — Thomas Love Peacock

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

I contrive to get through my day by sinking the morning in bed, and killing the evening in company; dressing and dining in the intermediate space, and stopping the chinks and crevices of the few vacant moments that remain with a little easy reading. And that amiable discontent and antisociality which you reprobate in our present drawing-room-table literature, I find, I do assure you, a very fine mental tonic, which reconciles me to my favourite pursuit of doing nothing, by showing me that nobody is worth doing any thing for. — Thomas Love Peacock

He had some taste for romance reading before he went to the university, where, we must confess, in justice to his college, he was cured of the love of reading in all its shapes; and the cure would have been radical, if disappointment in love, and total solitude, had not conspired to bring on a relapse. — Thomas Love Peacock

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

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

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

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. — Thomas Love Peacock

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. — Thomas Love Peacock

Clouds on clouds, in volumes driven, curtain round the vault of heaven. — Thomas Love Peacock

The critic does his utmost to blight genius in his infancy. — Thomas Love Peacock

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. — Thomas Love Peacock

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. — Thomas Love Peacock

Nothing can be more obvious than that all animals were created solely and exclusively for the use of man. — Thomas Love Peacock

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. — Thomas Love Peacock

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. — Thomas Love Peacock

Man yields to death; and man's sublimest works
Must yield at length to Time. — Thomas Love Peacock

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: ... — Thomas Love Peacock

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. — Thomas Love Peacock

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

She discovered, when it was too late, that she had mistaken the means for the end - that riches, rightly used, are instruments of happiness, but are not in themselves happiness. — Thomas Love Peacock

Sir, I have quarrelled with my wife; and a man who has quarrelled with his wife is absolved from all duty to his country. — Thomas Love Peacock

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. — Thomas Love Peacock

Is ours a government of the people, by the people, for the people, or a kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools? — Thomas Love Peacock

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