Thomas Chandler Haliburton
Contentment is, after all, simply refined indolence.
Whenever there is authority, there is a natural inclination to disobedience.
Nicknames stick to people, and the most ridiculous are the most adhesive.
Hope is a pleasant acquaintance, but an unsafe friend.
The happiness of every country depends upon the character of its people, rather than the form of its government.
A college education shows a man how little other people know.
To carry care to bed is to sleep with a pack on your back.
No one is rich whose expenditures exceed his means, and no one is poor whose incomings exceed his outgoings.
Failures to heroic minds are the stepping stones to success.
Self-possession is the backbone of authority.Collection: Self
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.Collection: Kissing
Every man's religion is his own, and nobody else's business.Collection: Men
Wise men, like wine, are best when old; pretty women, like bread, are best when young.Collection: Wise
Fact is stranger than fiction.Collection: Humanity
Hurry is only admissible in catching flies.Collection: Haste
A brave man is sometimes a desperado: a bully is always a coward.Collection: Men
Women forgive injuries, but never forget slights.Collection: Women
It is easier to make money than to save it. One is exertion, the other, self-denial.Collection: Self
[Grateful] Cheerfulness is health; its opposite, [ungrateful] melancholy, is disease.Collection: Gratitude
Over-confidence is as evil as undue anxiety.Collection: Evil
Death and taxes are inevitable.Collection: Inevitable
To carry care to bed is to sleep with a pack on your backCollection: Sleep
There is music wherever there is harmony, order, or proportion.Collection: Order
The suspicious parent makes an artful child.Collection: Inspirational
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.Collection: Husband
Some people have a perfect genius for doing nothing, and doing it assiduously.Collection: People
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.Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: Hate
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.Collection: Hands
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.Collection: Happiness
He who sports compliments, unless he takes good aim, may miss his mark, and be wounded by the recoil of his own weapon.Collection: Sports
When a man is wrong and won't admit is, he always gets angry.Collection: Crazy
Give me a chance, says Stupid, and I will show you. Ten to one he has had his chance already, and neglected it.Collection: Stupid
If it were not for a goodly supply of rumors, half true and half false, what would the gossips do?Collection: Gossip
I have learnt a good deal from my own talk.Collection: Deals
Life ain't all beer and skittles.Collection: Beer
Absurdities die of self-strangulation.Collection: Self
A woman who wants a charitable heart wants a pure mind.Collection: Heart
An uncontrolled imagination may become as surely intoxicated by overindulgence as a toper may do bodily with strong drink.Collection: Strong
Vanity is not half a bad principle, if it will but stick to legitimate business.Collection: Vanity
Ceremony is all backbone.Collection: Backbone
Mules and human jackasses are proverbially stubborn.Collection: Stubborn
Mothers can get weaned as well as babies.Collection: Mother
Fun has no limits. It is like the human race and face; there is a family likeness among all the species, but they all differ.Collection: Fun
Look not to a woman's head for her brains, but rather to her heart.Collection: Heart
Nature's bank-dividends.Collection: Harvest
Impossible desires are the height of unreason.Collection: Desire
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.Collection: Doors
Avarice fills its purse at the expense of its belly.Collection: Purses