Samuel Richardson Quotations

Where words are restrained, the eyes often talk a great deal.

Men will bear many things from a kept mistress, which they would not bear from a wife.

The laws were not made so much for the direction of good men, as to circumscribe the bad.

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

Hope is the cordial that keeps life from stagnating.

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

The life of a good man is a continual warfare with his passions.

The companion of an evening, and the companion for life, require very different qualifications.

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.

Love will draw an elephant through a key-hole.

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.

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.

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.

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.

For the human mind is seldom at stay: If you do not grow better, you will most undoubtedly grow worse.

It is much easier to find fault with others, than to be faultless ourselves.

Handsome husbands often make a wife's heart ache.

Tutors who make youth learned do not always make them virtuous.

Women do not often fall in love with philosophers.

Those who have least to do are generally the most busy people in the world.

There is but one pride pardonable; that of being above doing a base or dishonorable action.

Parents sometimes make not those allowances for youth, which, when young, they wished to be made for themselves.

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.

The little words in the Republic of Letters, like the little folks in a nation, are the most useful and significant.

It is better to be thought perverse than insincere.

Prejudices in disfavor of a person fix deeper, and are much more difficult to be removed, than prejudices in favor.

People who act like angels ought to have angels to deal with.

Shame is a fitter and generally a more effectual punishment for a child than beating.

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.

Every one, more or less, loves Power, yet those who most wish for it are seldom the fittest to be trusted with it.

Every scholar, I presume, is not, necessarily, a man of sense.

Those we dislike can do nothing to please us.

A widow's refusal of a lover is seldom so explicit as to exclude hope.

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!

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

Men generally are afraid of a wife who has more understanding than themselves.

The plays and sports of children are as salutary to them as labor and work are to grown persons.

Love gratified is love satisfied, and love satisfied is indifference begun.

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

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

All human excellence is but comparative. There may be persons who excel us, as much as we fancy we excel the meanest.

All our pursuits, from childhood to manhood, are only trifles of different sorts and sizes, proportioned to our years and views.

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.

Let a man do what he will by a single woman, the world is encouragingly apt to think Marriage a sufficient amends.

The Cause of Women is generally the Cause of Virtue.

The World, thinking itself affronted by superior merit, takes delight to bring it down to its own level.

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

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

Vast is the field of Science. The more a man knows, the more he will find he has to know.

We are all very ready to believe what we like.

What likelihood is there of corrupting a man who has no ambition.

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.

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

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.

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.

A Stander-by is often a better judge of the game than those that play.

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

Women love to be called cruel, even when they are kindest.

A husband's mother and his wife had generally better be visitors than inmates.

From sixteen to twenty, all women, kept in humor by their hopes and by their attractions, appear to be good-natured.

The pleasures of the mighty are obtained by the tears of the poor.

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

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.

Those who can least bear a jest upon themselves, will be most diverted with one passed on others.

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 man may keep a woman, but not his estate.

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

It may be very generous in one person to offer what it would be ungenerous in another to accept.

Quantity in diet is more to be regarded than quality. A full meal is a great enemy both to study and industry.

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.

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

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.

Those who will bear much, shall have much to bear.

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

Would Alexander, madman as he was, have been so much a madman, had it not been for Homer?

The wisest among us is a fool in some things.

We can all be good when we have no temptation or provocation to the contrary.

The thing you don't get looking at brochures and stats is what the school is really like,

Quantity in food is more to be regarded than quality. A full meal is a great enemy both to study and industry.

As long as my property taxes are high, I have to raise rents or make adjustments.

The first step in achieving prosperity and wealth is learning to appreciate what you already have.

'Passion' a word which involves so many feelings. I feel it when we touch; I feel it when we kiss; I feel it when I look at you. For you are my passion; my one true love.

...for my master, bad as I have thought him, is not half so bad as this woman.-To be sure she must be an atheist!

Angry men make themselves beds of nettles.

Love before marriage is absolutely necessary.

What honest man would not rather be the sufferer than the defrauder?

Good men must be affectionate men.

Romances, in general are calculated rather to fire the imagination than to inform the judgment.

By my soul, I can neither eat, drink, nor sleep; nor, what's still worse, love any woman in the world but her.

Men are less forgiving than women.

The person who will bear much shall have much to bear, all the world through.

I am forced, as I have often said, to try to make myself laugh, that I may not cry: for one or other I must do.

Nothing can be more wounding to a spirit not ungenerous, than a generous forgiveness.

Smatterers in learning are the most opinionated.

A feeling heart is a blessing that no one, who has it, would be without; and it is a moral security of innocence; since the heart that is able to partake of the distress of another, cannot wilfully give it.

Of what violences, murders, depredations, have not the epic poets, from all antiquity, been the occasion, by propagating false honor, false glory, and false religion?

Nothing dries sooner than tears.

That dangerous but too commonly received notion, that a reformed rake makes the best husband.

The grace that makes every grace amiable is humility.

Sorrow makes an ugly face odious.