Thomas Love Peacock Quotes
1785–1866
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Clouds on clouds, in volumes driven, Curtain round the vault of heaven.
Thomas Love Peacock, Rhododaphne, Canto V, line 257. 
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More Thomas Love Peacock Quotes
My quarrel with him is, that his works contain nothing worth quoting; and a book that furnishes no quotations, is, me judice [in my opinion], no book - it is a plaything.
Thomas Love Peacock— About Sir Walter Scott, in Crotchet Castle, chapter IX (1831)
He bore a simple wild-flower wreath: Narcissus, and the sweet brier rose; Vervain, and flexile thyme, that breathe Rich fragrance; modest heath, that glows With purple bells; the amaranth bright, That no decay, nor fading knows, Like true love's holiest, rarest light; And every purest flower, that blows In that sweet time, which Love most blesses, When spring on summer's confines presses.
Thomas Love Peacock— Rhododaphne, Canto I, line 107.
Marriage may often be a stormy lake, but celibacy is almost always a muddy horsepond.
Thomas Love Peacock— 1817 Melincourt, ch.7.
Laughter ispleasant, butthe exertion istoomuchfor me.
Thomas Love Peacock— 1818 NightmareAbbey, ch.5.
Sir, I have quarrelled with my wife; and a man who has quarrelled with his wife is absolved from all duty to his country.
Thomas Love Peacock— 1818 NightmareAbbey, ch.11.
The mountain sheep are sweeter, But the valley sheep are fatter; We therefore deemed it meeter To carry off the latter. We made an expedition; We met a host, and quelled it; We forced a strong position, And killed the men who held it.
Thomas Love Peacock— 1829 The Misfortunes of Elphin,'TheWar-Song of DinasVawr'.
But though first love's impassioned blindness Has passed away in colder light, I still have thought of you with kindness, And shall do, till our last goodnight. The ever-rolling silent hours Will bring a time we shall not know, When our young days of gathering flowers Will be an hundred years ago.
Thomas Love Peacock— 1860 'Love and Age'.
Marriage may often be a stormy lake, but celibacy is almost always a muddy horsepond.
Thomas Love Peacock— Melincourt, chapter VII (1817)
There are two reasons for drinking: one is, when you are thirsty, to cure it; the other, when you are not thirsty, to prevent it. The first is obvious, mechanical, and plebeian; the second is most refined, abstract, prospicient, and canonical.
Thomas Love Peacock— Melincourt, chapter XVI
The waste of plenty is the resource of scarcity.
Thomas Love Peacock— Melincourt, chapter XXIV
When Scythrop grew up, he was sent, as usual, to a public school, where a little learning was painfully beaten into him, and from thence to the university, where it was carefully taken out of him.
Thomas Love Peacock— Nightmare Abbey, chapter I (1818)
Respectable means rich, and decent means poor. I should die if I heard my family called decent.
Thomas Love Peacock— Crotchet Castle, chapter III (1832)
I never failed to convince an audience that the best thing they could do was to go away.
Thomas Love Peacock— Crotchet Castle, chapter XVIII
I almost think it is the ultimate destiny of science to exterminate the human race.
Thomas Love Peacock— Gryll Grange, chapter XIX (1860)
In a bowl to sea went wise men three, On a brilliant night in June: They carried a net, and their hearts were set On fishing up the moon.
Thomas Love Peacock— Thomas Love Peacock, The Wise Men of Gotham, Paper Money Lyrics, Stanza 1.
How troublesome is day! It calls us from our sleep away; It bids us from our pleasant dreams awake, And sends us forth to keep or break Our promises to pay. How troublesome is day!
Thomas Love Peacock— Thomas Love Peacock, Fly-by-Night, Paper Money lyrics.
My thoughts by night are often filled with visions false as fair. For in the past alone, I build my castles in the air.
Thomas Love Peacock— Thomas Love Peacock, Castles in the Air, Stanza 1.
Marriage may often be a stormy lake, but celibacy is almost always a muddy horsepond.
Thomas Love Peacock— Thomas Love Peacock, Melincourt (1817), ch. 7
Time, the foe of man's dominion, Wheels around in ceaseless flight, Scattering from his hoary pinion Shades of everlasting night.
Thomas Love Peacock— Thomas Love Peacock, The Genius of the Thames, Part II, Stanza 42.
The present is our own; but while we speak, We cease from its possession, and resign The stage we tread on, to another race, As vain, and gay, and mortal as ourselves.
Thomas Love Peacock— Thomas Love Peacock, Time, line 9.
Man yields to death; and man's sublimest works Must yield at length to Time.
Thomas Love Peacock— Thomas Love Peacock, Time, line 65.
Time is lord of thee: Thy wealth, thy glory, and thy name are his.
Thomas Love Peacock— Thomas Love Peacock, Time, line 71.
"In his last binn Sir Peter lies." * * * * He kept at true humour's mark The social flow of pleasure's tide: He never made a brow look dark, Nor caused a tear, but when he died.
Thomas Love Peacock— Thomas Love Peacock, To Sir Peter; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 232.
