Samuel Richardson's Quotes

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

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

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

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 Cause of Women is generally the Cause of Virtue.

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.

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

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

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

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 hardly can be a greater difference between any two men, than there too often is, between the same man, a lover and a husband.

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Love will draw an elephant through a key-hole.

Handsome husbands often make a wife's heart ache.

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.

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.

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.

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

Calamity is the test of integrity.

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

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

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

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

Those we dislike can do nothing to please us.

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.

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

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

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.

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 do not often fall in love with philosophers.

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

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