A book that furnishes no quotations is, me judice, no book?it is a plaything.

(Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866), British author. Dr. Folliot, in Crotchet Castle, ch. 9 (1831).)

Respectable means rich, and decent means poor. I should die if I heard my family called decent.

(Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866), British author. Lady Clarinda, in Crotchet Castle, ch. 3 (1831).)

Marriage may often be a stormy lake, but celibacy is almost always a muddy horsepond.

(Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866), British author. Melincourt, ch. 7 (1817).)

Ancient sculpture is the true school of modesty. But where the Greeks had modesty, we have cant; where they had poetry, we have cant; where they had patriotism, we have cant; where they had anything that exalts, delights, or adorns humanity, we have nothing but cant, cant, cant.

(Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866), British author. Crotchet Castle, ch. 7 (1831).)

The rich man goes out yachting,
Where sanctity can't pursue him;
The poor goes afloat
In a fourpenny boat,
Where the bishop groans to view him.

(Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866), British poet. Rich and Poor; or, Saint and Sinner (l. 36-40). . . Oxford Book of Satirical Verse, The. Geoffrey Grigson, comp. (1980) Oxford University Press.)

The mountain sheep are sweeter,
But the valley sheep are fatter;
We therefore deemed it meeter
To carry off the latter.

(Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866), British poet. The Misfortunes of Elphin (l. 1-3). . . Oxford Anthology of English Literature, The, Vols. I-II. Frank Kermode and John Hollander, general eds. (1973) Oxford University Press (Also published as six paperback vols.: Medieval English Literature, J. B. Trapp, ed.; The Literature of Renaissance England, John Hollander and Frank Kermode, eds.; The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century, Martin Price, ed.; Romantic Poetry and Prose, Harold Bloom and Lionel Trilling, eds.; Victorian Prose and Poetry, Lionel Trilling and Harold Bloom, eds.; Modern British Literature, Frank Kermode and John Hollander, eds.).)

In a bowl to sea went wise men three,
On a brilliant night of June:
They carried a net, and their hearts were set
On fishing up the moon.

(Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866), British poet. Nightmare Abbey (l. 1-3). . . Oxford Book of English Verse, The, 1250-1918. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. (New ed., rev. and enl., 1939) Oxford University Press.)

I never failed to convince an audience that the best thing they could do was to go away.

(Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866), British author. Mr. Skionar, in Crotchet Castle, ch. 18 (1831).)

The waste of plenty is the resource of scarcity.

(Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866), British author. Melincourt, ch. 24 (1817).)