Samuel Richardson Quotes

Women are always most observed when they seem themselves least to observe, or to lay out for observation.

Tis certain that Morality is an indispensable Requisite of true Religion, and there can be none without it. But it would become the Pride and Ignorance of Pagans only, to magnify it, as the Whole of what is necessary.

To be a clergyman, and all that is compassionate and virtuous, ought to be the same thing.

Angry men make themselves beds of nettles.

What we want to tell, we wish our friend to have curiosity to hear.

We are all very ready to believe what we like.

All human excellence is but comparative — there are persons who excel us, as much as we fancy we excel the meanest.

Marriage is a state that is attended with so much care and trouble, that it is a kind of faulty indulgence and selfishness to livesingle, in order to avoid the difficulties it is attended with.

The coyest maids make the fondest wives.

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.

A beautiful woman must expect to be more accountable for her steps, than one less attractive.

An acquaintance with the muses, in the education of youth, contributes not a little to soften manners. It gives a delicate turn to the imagination and a polish to the mind.

Great allowances ought to be made for the petulance of persons labouring under ill-health.

People of little understanding are most apt to be angry when their sense is called into question.

A good man will not engage even in a national cause, without examining the justice of it.

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.

Friendship is the perfection of love, and superior to love; it is love purified, exalted, proved by experience and a consent of minds. Love, Madam, may, and love does, often stop short of friendship.

People hardly ever do anything in anger, of which they do not repent.

Good men must be affectionate men.

O! what a Godlike Power is that of doing Good! I envy the Rich and the Great for nothing else!

Honeymoon lasts not nowadays above a fortnight.

Nothing in human nature is so God-like as the disposition to do good to our fellow-creatures.

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.

We have nothing to do, but to choose what is right, to be steady in the pursuit of it, and leave the issue to Providence.

It is better to be thought perverse than insincere.

Handsome husbands often make a wife's heart ache.

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.

There are men who think themselves too wise to be religious.

Platonic love is platonic nonsense.

The difference in the education of men and women must give the former great advantages over the latter, even where geniuses are equal.

Those who doubt themselves most generally err least.

Women love those best (whether men, women, or children) who give them most pain.

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.

Twenty-four is a prudent age for women to marry at.

Too liberal self-accusations are generally but so many traps for acquittal with applause.

Parents cannot expect advice to have the same force upon their children as experience has upon themselves.

Be sure don't let people's telling you, you are pretty, puff you up; for you did not make yourself, and so can have no praise due to you for it. It is virtue and goodness only, that make the true beauty.

The eye is the casement at which the heart generally looks out. Many a woman who will not show herself at the door, has tipt the sly, the intelligible wink from the window.

Necessity may well be called the mother of invention but calamity is the test of integrity.

Married people should not be quick to hear what is said by either when in ill humor.

The Cause of Women is generally the Cause of Virtue.

Men know no medium: They will either, spaniel-like, fawn at your feet, or be ready to leap into your lap.

The unhappy never want enemies.

There would be no supporting life were we to feel quite as poignantly for others as we do for ourselves.

I know not my own heart if it be not absolutely free.

Those who respect age, deserve to live to be old, and to be respected themselves.

Sorrow makes an ugly face odious.

Those we dislike can do nothing to please us.