Expedition Of Humphry Clinker Quotes

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

that report has influenced my opinion of his looks____You know we are the fools of prejudice. Howsoever

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

For the first time, Smollett adopted a device that Barbara Foley calls “pseudofactual imposture,” a strategy of presentation that we associate with the fictions of Behn, Defoe, and Richardson.

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.

Not that there is any thing disagreeable about his person, but there is a total want of that nameless charm which captivates and controuls the inchanted spirit—at least, he appears to me to have this defect; but if he had all the engaging qualifications which a man can possess, they would be excited in vain against that constancy, which, I flatter myself, is the characteristic of my nature. No,

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.

As for the liberty of the press, like every other privilege, it must be restrained within certain bounds; for if it is carried to a breach of law, religion, and charity, it becomes one of the greatest evils that ever annoyed the community. If the lowest ruffian may stab your good-name with impunity in England, will you be so uncandid as to exclaim against Italy for the practice of common assassination? To what purpose is our property secured, if our moral character is left defenceless? People

truth is, I look upon both candidates in the same light; and should think myself a traitor to the constitution of my country, if I voted for either. If every elector would bring the same consideration home to his conscience, we should not have such reason to exclaim against the venality of p____ts.5 But we are all a pack of venal and corrupted rascals; so lost to all sense of honesty, and all tenderness of character, that, in a little time, I am fully persuaded, nothing will be infamous but virtue and public-spirit.

There is another point, which I would much rather see determined; whether the world was always as contemptible, as it appears to me at present?—If the morals of mankind have not contracted an extraordinary degree of depravity, within these thirty years, then must I be infected with the common vice of old men, difficilis, querulus, laudator temporis acti;14 or, which is more probable, the impetuous pursuits and avocations of youth have formerly hindered me from observing those rotten parts of human nature, which now appear so offensively to my observation.

Then humming thrice, he assumed a most ridiculous solemnity of aspect, and entered into a learned investigation of the nature of stink...The French were pleased with the putrid effluvia of animal food; and so were the Hottentots in Africa, and the Savages in Greenland; and that the Negroes on the coast of Senegal would not touch fish till it was rotten; strong presumptions in favour of what is generally called stink, as those nations are in a state of nature, undebauched by luxury, unseduced by whim and caprice: that he had reason to believe the stercoraceous flavour, condemned by prejudice as a stink, was, in fact, most agreeable to the organs of smelling; for, that every person who pretended to nauseate the smell of another's excretions, snuffed up his own with particular complacency...

There is such malice, treachery, and dissimulation, even among professed friends and intimate companions, as cannot fail to strike a virtuous mind with horror; and when Vice quits the stage for a moment, her place is immediately occupied by Folly...

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

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

Ya se sabe que somos el juguete de los prejuicios. Jery Melford

En fin, la estupidez a veces es más irritante que la bribonería, y también más perjudicial. Matt Bramble

¡Ay de aquella nación en la que la turba tenga libertad para servir sus propias inclinaciones! El comercio, sin lugar a dudas, es una bendición, mientras esté circunscrito a sus propios canales, pero un exceso de riqueza acarrea siempre un exceso de males: mal gusto, falsos apetitos, falsas necesidades, extravagancia, venalidad y un desprecio del orden que engendran una licenciosidad, insolencia y partidismo que mantienen a la sociedad en continua efervescencia y acaban destruyendo todas las distinciones de la sociedad civil con el único resultado de la anarquía y el motín universales. Capitán Lismahago

If the morals of mankind have not contracted an extraordinary degree of depravity within these 30 years, then I must be infected with the common vice of old men, difficilis, querulus, laudator temporis acti [tiresome, complaining, a praiser of past times]; or, which is more probable, the impetuous pursuits and avocations of youth have formerly hindered me from observing those rotten parts of human nature, which now appear offensively to my observation.