Thomas Chandler Haliburton Quotes - Page 3

Women will sometimes confess their sins, but I never knew one to confess her faults.

Lawyers are like priests; people come to them and disburden themselves of their troubles, and get consolation, if they pay well for it; but there is one point in which they don't treat them like priests; they don't confess all their sins; they suppress them, and often get themselves and their counsel into a scrape by it, that's a fact.

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?

I have learnt a good deal from my own talk.

Life ain't all beer and skittles.

Absurdities die of self-strangulation.

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

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

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

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

Ceremony is all backbone.

Mules and human jackasses are proverbially stubborn.

Mothers can get weaned as well as babies.

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.

There is nothing like fun, is there? I haven't any myself, but I do like it in others. O, we need it. We need all the counterweights we can muster to balance the sad relations of life. God has made many sunny spots in the heart; why should we exclude the light from them?

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

Nature's bank-dividends.

Impossible desires are the height of unreason.

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.

Avarice fills its purse at the expense of its belly.