Douglas William Jerrold Quotes

The only athletic sport I ever mastered was backgammon.

Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest.

After all there is something about a wedding-gown prettier than in any other gown in the world.

A coquette is like a recruiting sergeant, always on the lookout for fresh victims.

A man never so beautifully shows his own strength as when he respects a woman's softness.

He is one of those wise philanthropists who, in a time of famine, would vote for nothing but a supply of toothpicks.

Quality, not quantity, is my measure.

Marriage is like wine. It is not be properly judged until the second glass.

A man is in no danger so long as he talks his love; but to write it is to impale himself on his own pothooks.

Grumblers deserve to be operated upon surgically; their trouble is usually chronic.

He was so benevolent, so merciful a man that, in his mistaken passion, he would have held an umbrella over a duck in a shower of rain.

Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers' gardens.

A blessed companion is a book! A book that, fitly chosen, is a life-long friend. A book — the unfailing Damon to his loving Pythias. A book that — at a touch — pours its heart into our own.

There is peace more destructive of the manhood of living man than war is destructive of his material body.

What a fine-looking thing is war! Yet, dress it as we may, dress and feather it, daub it with gold, huzza it, and sing swaggering songs about it,--what is it, nine times out of ten, but murder in uniform!

Some people are so fond of ill luck that they run halfway to meet it.

A conservative is a man who will not look at the new moon out of respect for that 'ancient institution' the old one.

The blackest of fluid is used as an agent to enlighten the world.

The language of women should be luminous, but not voluminous.

He who owns the soil, owns up to the sky.

Slugs crawl and crawl over our cabbages, like the world's slander over a good name. You may kill them, it is true; but there is the slime.

A man, so to speak, who is not able to bow to his own conscience every morning is hardly in a condition to respectfully salute the world at any other time of the day.

Not peace at any price! Chains are worse than bayonets.

If slander be a snake, it is a winged one - it flies as well as creeps.

Intemperance is the epitome of every crime, the cause of every kind of misery.

A pill that the present moment is daily bread to thousands.

Fortunes made in no time are like shirts made in no time; it's ten to one if they hang long together.

Luck, mere luck may make even madness wisdom.

Gravity is more suggestive than convincing.

Don't buy a single vote more than necessary.

Religion is in the heart, not in the knees.

Women, somehow, have the same fear of witty men as of fireworks.

There are a good many pious people who are as careful of their religion as of their best service of china, only using it on holy occasions, for fear it should get chipped or flawed in working-day wear.

Jewels! It's my belief that when woman was made, jewels were invented only to make her the more mischievous.

Wits, like drunken men with swords, are apt to draw their steel upon their best acquaintances.

Malice blunts the point of wit.

Self-defense is the clearest of all laws; and for this reason - the lawyers didn't make it.

Keep your eyes and ears open, if you desire to get on in the world.

A piece of simple goodness--a letter gushing from the heart; a beautiful unstudied vindication of the worth and untiring sweetness of human nature--a record of the invulnerability of man, armed with high purpose, sanctified by truth.

What women would do if they could not cry, nobody knows. What poor, defenceless creatures they would be!

That man is thought a dangerous knave, Or zealot plotting crime, Who for advancement of his kind Is wiser than his time.

Dogmation is puppyism come to its full growth.

I never hear the rattling of dice that it does not sound to me like the funeral bell of the whole family.

The best thing I know between France and England is the sea.

Duty, though set about by thorns, may still be made a staff supporting even while it tortures. Cast it away, and, like the prophet's wand, it changes to a snake.

Habitual intoxication is the epitome of every crime.

A creature undefiled by the taint of the world, unvexed by its injustice, unwearied by its hollow pleasures; a being fresh from the source of light, with something of its universal lustre in it. If childhood be this, how holy the duty to see that in its onward growth it shall be no other!

Nature designed us to be of good cheer.

We love peace, as we abhor pusillanimity; but not peace at any price.

There are some people as obtuse in recognizing an argument as they are in appreciating wit. You couldn't drive it into their heads with a hammer.