Tobias Smollett Quotes

“A novel is a large diffused picture, comprehending the characters of life, disposed in different groups, and exhibited in various attitudes, for the purposes of an uniform plan, and general occurrence, to which every individual figure is subservient.

But this plan cannot be executed with propriety, probability, or success, without a principal personage to attract the attention, unite the incidents, unwind the clue of the labyrinth, and at last close the scene, by virtue of his own importance.”

“At every place where we halted, did she mount the stage, and flourished her rusty arms, without being able to make one conquest.”

“In short, stupidity is sometimes more irritating than rascality, and also more harmful.”

“One wit, like a knuckle of ham in soup, gives a zest and flavour to the dish, but more than one serves only to spoil the pottage.”

“Ridiculous modes, invented by ignorance, and adopted by folly.”

“The bread I eat in London, is a deleterious paste, mixed up with chalk, alum, and bone ashes: insipid to the taste, and destructive to the constitution.”

“The capital is become an overgrown monster; which like a dropsical head, will in time leave the body and extremities without nourishment and support.”

“The theatrical hero was too far gone in romance to brook such usage: he replied in blank verse, and a formal challenge ensued.”

“What passes for wine among us, is not the juice of the grape. It is an adulterous mixture, brewed up of nauseous ingredients, by dunces, who are bunglers in the art of poison-making; and yet we, and our forefathers, are and have been poisoned by this cursed drench, without taste or flavour.

The only genuine and wholesome beveridge in England, is London porter, and Dorchester table-beer; but as for your ale and your gin, your cyder and your perry, and all the trashy family of made wines, I detest them as infernal compositions, contrived for the destruction of the human species.”

“Woe be to that nation, where the multitude is at liberty to follow their own inclinations!”

“You know we are the fools of prejudice.”