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.

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.

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

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?

Absurdities die of self-strangulation.

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

There is the kiss of welcome and of parting, the long, lingering, loving, present one; the stolen, or the mutual one; the kiss of love, of joy, and of sorrow; the seal of promise and receipt of fulfillment.

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

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

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.

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.

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

The suspicious parent makes an artful child.

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

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

Contentment is, after all, simply refined indolence.

Hope is a pleasant acquaintance, but an unsafe friend.

Women forgive injuries, but never forget slights.

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

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

Death and taxes are inevitable.

Just what part of meow don't you understand?

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

Ceremony is all backbone.

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

Coerced innocence is like an imprisoned lark,--open the door, and it is off forever. The bird that roams through the sky and the groves unrestrained knows how to dodge the hawk and protect itself; but the caged one, the moment it leaves its bars and bolts behind, is pounced upon by the fowler or the vulture.

Hurry is only admissible in catching flies.

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

Circumstances alter cases.

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

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

A temperate anger has virtue in it.

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.

Fact is stranger than fiction.

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.

Fastidiousness is the envelope of indelicacy.

Punctuality is the sole of business.

Over-confidence is as evil as undue anxiety.

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

I have learnt a good deal from my own talk.

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.

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

A woman who wants a charitable heart wants a pure mind.