"The prudence of the best heads is often defeated by the tenderness of the best hearts"
About this Quote
Fielding sketches a tiny civil war inside any decent person: the mind draws clean borders, the heart keeps issuing visas. "Prudence" here isn’t cowardice; it’s the hard-won intelligence of people who have seen schemes collapse, money vanish, reputations burn. "Best heads" implies not mere cleverness but seasoned judgment. Yet Fielding’s sting is that such judgment is "often defeated" not by stupidity or vice, but by "tenderness" - the moral emotion we like to congratulate ourselves for having.
The line works because it refuses to flatter either side. It isn’t the Enlightenment slogan that reason should rule, and it isn’t the sentimental novel’s promise that feeling will save us. Fielding, a comic anatomist of hypocrisy, understands how compassion can be exploited and how self-image ("I am kind") can override calculation ("this will go badly"). The subtext is about vulnerability as a social force: tenderness makes us porous, and porous people are easier to maneuver, guilt, or charm into choices they already know they’ll regret.
In Fielding’s century, that tension was everywhere: a culture loudly celebrating sensibility while running on patronage, debt, and strict hierarchies. His fiction is crowded with good-hearted characters whose generosity becomes an invitation for predators and parasites. The line lands as both warning and acknowledgment: the best human motives aren’t safe from consequence. Sometimes the tragedy isn’t that we didn’t know better; it’s that we did, and we couldn’t bear to act like it.
The line works because it refuses to flatter either side. It isn’t the Enlightenment slogan that reason should rule, and it isn’t the sentimental novel’s promise that feeling will save us. Fielding, a comic anatomist of hypocrisy, understands how compassion can be exploited and how self-image ("I am kind") can override calculation ("this will go badly"). The subtext is about vulnerability as a social force: tenderness makes us porous, and porous people are easier to maneuver, guilt, or charm into choices they already know they’ll regret.
In Fielding’s century, that tension was everywhere: a culture loudly celebrating sensibility while running on patronage, debt, and strict hierarchies. His fiction is crowded with good-hearted characters whose generosity becomes an invitation for predators and parasites. The line lands as both warning and acknowledgment: the best human motives aren’t safe from consequence. Sometimes the tragedy isn’t that we didn’t know better; it’s that we did, and we couldn’t bear to act like it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Kindness |
|---|---|
| Source | The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling — Henry Fielding, 1749 (commonly cited source for the quote) |
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