Quotes by Samuel Richardson

• What we want to tell, we wish our friend to have curiosity to hear.
• Women do not often fall in love with philosophers.
• Would Alexander, madman as he was, have been so much a madman, had it not been for Homer?
• Women who have had no lovers, or having had one, two or three, have not found a husband, have perhaps rather had a miss than a loss, as men go.
• Women love to be called cruel, even when they are kindest.
• Tutors who make youth learned do not always make them virtuous.
• Women are so much in love with compliments that rather than want them, they will compliment one another, yet mean no more by it than the men do.
• Women are always most observed when they seem themselves least to observe, or to lay out for observation.
• Whenever we approve, we can find a hundred good reasons to justify our approbation. Whenever we dislike, we can find a thousand to justify our dislike.
• What likelihood is there of corrupting a man who has no ambition?
• We are all very ready to believe what we like.
• Vast is the field of Science. The more a man knows, the more he will find he has to know.
• Where words are restrained, the eyes often talk a great deal.
• Some children act as if they thought their parents had nothing to do, but to see them established in the world and then quit it.
• O! what a Godlike Power is that of doing Good! I envy the Rich and the Great for nothing else!
• The difference in the education of men and women must give the former great advantages over the latter, even where geniuses are equal.
• The companion of an evening, and the companion for life, require very different qualifications.
• The Cause of Women is generally the Cause of Virtue.
• Sorrow makes an ugly face odious.
• The English, the plain English, of the politest address of a gentleman to a lady is, I am now, dear Madam, your humble servant: Pray be so good as to let me be your Lord and Master.
• Smatterers in learning are the most opinionated.
• Shame is a fitter and generally a more effectual punishment for a child than beating.
• Quantity in food is more to be regarded than quality. A full meal is a great enemy both to study and industry.
• Nothing dries sooner than tears.
• People who act like angels ought to have angels to deal with.
• The first reading of a Will, where a person dies worth anything considerable, generally affords a true test of the relations' love to the deceased.
• Parents sometimes make not those allowances for youth, which, when young, they wished to be made for themselves.
• There are men who think themselves too wise to be religious.
• Nothing in human nature is so God-like as the disposition to do good to our fellow-creatures.
• To what a bad choice is many a worthy woman betrayed, by that false and inconsiderate notion, That a reformed rake makes the best husband!
• There is a pride, a self-love, in human minds that will seldom be kept so low as to make men and women humbler than they ought to be.
• People of little understanding are most apt to be angry when their sense is called into question.
• To be a clergyman, and all that is compassionate and virtuous, ought to be the same thing.
• Those who will bear much, shall have much to bear.
• Those who have least to do are generally the most busy people in the world.
• Those who can least bear a jest upon themselves, will be most diverted with one passed on others.
• Those we dislike can do nothing to please us.
• The pleasures of the mighty are obtained by the tears of the poor.
• There is but one pride pardonable; that of being above doing a base or dishonorable action.
• The laws were not made so much for the direction of good men, as to circumscribe the bad.
• There hardly can be a greater difference between any two men, than there too often is, between the same man, a lover and a husband.
• The World, thinking itself affronted by superior merit, takes delight to bring it down to its own level.
• The plays and sports of children are as salutary to them as labor and work are to grown persons.
• The mind can be but full. It will be as much filled with a small disagreeable occurrence, having no other, as with a large one.
• The little words in the Republic of Letters, like the little folks in a nation, are the most useful and significant.
• The life of a good man is a continual warfare with his passions.
• There would be no supporting life were we to feel quite as poignantly for others as we do for ourselves.
• A Stander-by is often a better judge of the game than those that play.
• Great allowances ought to be made for the petulance of persons laboring under ill-health.
• From sixteen to twenty, all women, kept in humor by their hopes and by their attractions, appear to be good-natured.
• For the human mind is seldom at stay: If you do not grow better, you will most undoubtedly grow worse.
• Every scholar, I presume, is not, necessarily, a man of sense.
• Every one, more or less, loves Power, yet those who most wish for it are seldom the fittest to be trusted with it.
• Calamity is the test of integrity.
• Handsome husbands often make a wife's heart ache.
• A widow's refusal of a lover is seldom so explicit as to exclude hope.
• As a child is indulged or checked in its early follies, a ground is generally laid for the happiness or misery of the future man.
• A man may keep a woman, but not his estate.
• A husband's mother and his wife had generally better be visitors than inmates.
• A good man, though he will value his own countrymen, yet will think as highly of the worthy men of every nation under the sun.
• A beautiful woman must expect to be more accountable for her steps, than one less attractive.
• Necessity may well be called the mother of invention but calamity is the test of integrity.
• Prejudices in disfavor of a person fix deeper, and are much more difficult to be removed, than prejudices in favor.
• All our pursuits, from childhood to manhood, are only trifles of different sorts and sizes, proportioned to our years and views.
• Love before marriage is absolutely necessary.
• All human excellence is but comparative. There may be persons who excel us, as much as we fancy we excel the meanest.
• Honeymoon lasts not nowadays above a fortnight.
• Marry first, and love will come after is a shocking assertion; since a thousand things may happen to make the state but barely tolerable, when it is entered into with mutual affection.
• Married people should not be quick to hear what is said by either when in ill humor.
• Marriage is the highest state of friendship. If happy, it lessens our cares by dividing them, at the same time that it doubles our pleasures by mutual participation.
• Love will draw an elephant through a key-hole.
• Love is not a volunteer thing.
• Love gratified is love satisfied, and love satisfied is indifference begun.
• Men generally are afraid of a wife who has more understanding than themselves.
• Men will bear many things from a kept mistress, which they would not bear from a wife.
• Let a man do what he will by a single woman, the world is encouragingly apt to think Marriage a sufficient amends.
• It may be very generous in one person to offer what it would be ungenerous in another to accept.
• It is much easier to find fault with others, than to be faultless ourselves.
• It is better to be thought perverse than insincere.
• If the education and studies of children were suited to their inclinations and capacities, many would be made useful members of society that otherwise would make no figure in it.
• Humility is a grace that shines in a high condition but cannot, equally, in a low one because a person in the latter is already, perhaps, too much humbled.
• Hope is the cordial that keeps life from stagnating.