Thomas > Thomas's Quotes

“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; and he was sent home like a well-threshed ear of corn, with nothing in his head.”
― Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey

“The juice of the grape is the liquid quintessence of concentrated sunbeams.”
― Thomas Love Peacock, Melincourt; Or Sir Oran Hautton

“Is ours a government of the people, by the people, for the people, or a kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools?”
― Thomas Love Peacock

“I like the immaterial world. I like to live among thoughts and images of the past and the possible, and even of the impossible, now and then.”
― Thomas Love Peacock, Gryll Grange

“Now I should rather suppose there is no reason for it: it is the fashion to be unhappy. To have a reason for being so would be exceedingly commonplace: to be so without any is the province of genius.”
― Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey

“The critic does his utmost to blight genius in his infancy.”
― Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey

“There is a time for every thing under the sun. You may as well dine first, and be miserable afterwards.”
― Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey

“What do we see by [our enlightened age] which our ancestors saw not, and which at the same time is worth seeing? We see a hundred men hanged, where they saw one. We see five hundred transported, where they saw one. We see five thousand in the workhouse, where they saw one. . . . We see children perishing in manufactories, where they saw them flourishing in the fields. We see prisons, where they saw castles. We see masters, where they saw representatives. In short, they saw true men, where we see false knaves. They saw Milton, and we see Mr. Sackbut.”
― Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey

“And as for the human mind, I deny that it is the same in all men.  I hold that there is every variety of natural capacity from the idiot to Newton and Shakespeare; the mass of mankind, midway between these extremes, being blockheads of different degrees; education leaving them pretty nearly as it found them, with this single difference, that it gives a fixed direction to their stupidity, a sort of incurable wry neck to the thing they call their understanding. ”
― Thomas Love Peacock, The Collected Works of Thomas Love Peacock: PergamonMedia

“If we go on in this way, we shall have a new art of poetry, of which one of the first rules will be: To remember to forget that there are any such things as sunshine and music in the world.”
― Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey