Thomas Chandler Haliburton quotes:

A woman has two smiles that an angel might envy, the smile that accepts a lover before words are uttered, and the smile that lights on the first born babe, and assures it of a mother's love.

Failures to heroic minds are the stepping stones to success.

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

Fact is stranger than fiction.

Contentment is, after all, simply refined indolence.

Nicknames stick to people, and the most ridiculous are the most adhesive.

Mules and human jackasses are proverbially stubborn.

Favoritism manifests itself in all departments of government, public and private. It is the harder to avoid, because it is so natural.

[Grateful] Cheerfulness is health; its opposite, [ungrateful] melancholy, is disease.

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

A college education shows a man how little other people know.

No one is rich whose expenditures exceed his means, and no one is poor whose incomings exceed his outgoings.

Avarice fills its purse at the expense of its belly.

Wishes, like castles in the air, are inexpensive and not taxable.

Over-confidence is as evil as undue anxiety.

Punctuality is the soul of business.

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

Hope is a pleasant acquaintance, but an unsafe friend.

Life ain't all beer and skittles.

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?

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.

Wise men, like wine, are best when old; pretty women, like bread, are best when young.

A brave man is sometimes a desperado: a bully is always a coward.

A coxcomb is four-fifths affectation and one-fifth vanity.

To carry care to bed is to sleep with a pack on your back.

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.

He who sports compliments, unless he takes good aim, may miss his mark, and be wounded by the recoil of his own weapon.

When a man is wrong and won't admit it, he always gets angry.

A man is never astonished that he doesn't know what another does, but he is surprised at the gross ignorance of the other in not knowing what he does.

A temperate anger has virtue in it.

Absurdities die of self-strangulation.

As soon as a woman begins to dress "loud," her manners and conversation partake of the same element.

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.

Ceremony is all backbone.

Circumstances alter cases.

Death and taxes are inevitable.

Every man's religion is his own, and nobody else's business.

Fastidiousness is the envelope of indelicacy.

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.

Give me a chance, says Stupid, and I will show you. Ten to one he has had his chance already, and neglected it.

Hope is a pleasant acquaintance, but an unsafe friend, not the man for your banker, though he may do for a traveling companion.

Hurry is only admissible in catching flies.

I have learnt a good deal from my own talk.

If it were not for a goodly supply of rumors, half true and half false, what would the gossips do?

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.

Impossible desires are the height of unreason.

It is easier to make money than to save it. One is exertion, the other, self-denial.

Just what part of meow don't you understand?

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.

Lawyers are like spiders, they've eat up all the flies, and I guess they'll have to eat each other soon.

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

Loud-dressing men and women have also loud characters.

Money is a necessity; so is dirt.

Mothers can get weaned as well as babies.

Nature's bank-dividends.

One of the old philosophers says that it is the part of wisdom to sometimes seem a fool; but in our day there are too many ready-made ones to render this a desirable policy.

People have no right to make fools of themselves, unless they have no relations to blush for them.

Punctuality is the sole of business.

Self-possession is the backbone of authority.

Some people have a perfect genius for doing nothing, and doing it assiduously.

The bee, though it finds every rose has a thorn, comes back loaded with honey from his rambles; and why should not other tourists do the same?

The happiness of every country depends upon the character of its people, rather than the form of its government.

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.

The suspicious parent makes an artful child.

There is music wherever there is harmony, order, or proportion.

There is nothing like fun, is there? I haven't any myself, but I do like it in others.

To carry care to bed is to sleep with a pack on your back

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

We can do without any article of luxury we have never had; but when once obtained, it is not in human natur' to surrender it voluntarily.

We reckon hours and minutes to be dollars and cents.

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.

When a man is wrong and won't admit is, he always gets angry.

Women forgive injuries, but never forget slights.

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