Named source · 1742

Joseph Andrews Quotes by Henry Fielding: Context & Meanings

1 quotation linked to Joseph Andrews by or associated with Henry Fielding, with source notes, explanations and related topics.

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Henry Fielding’s 1742 comic novel The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and of his Friend Mr. Abraham Adams

Topics and ideas

Example, character, hypocrisy, virtue, education, social satire and the comic testing of moral professions.

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It is a trite but true observation, that examples work more forcibly on the mind than precepts.

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“It is a trite but true observation, that examples work more forcibly on the mind than precepts.”

Henry Fielding

Voice: Fictional narrator · Narrator

Meaning & context

Fielding’s narrator argues that visible examples of conduct can shape imitation more powerfully than abstract instruction alone.

Source details

Joseph Andrews, Book I, Chapter I, Project Gutenberg #9611. Fielding opens his narrator’s discussion of exemplary lives by observing that examples work more forcibly on the mind than precepts, then develops the claim through imitation and the moral purpose he assigns to writing. It is eighteenth-century literary argument, not a modern experimental finding about learning.

Henry Fielding’s 1742 comic novel The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and of his Friend Mr. Abraham Adams

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