Famous Samuel Richardson Quotations

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"The difference in the education of men and women must give the former great advantages over the latter, even where geniuses are equal."
by Samuel Richardson
"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!"
by Samuel Richardson
"Tutors who make youth learned do not always make them virtuous."
by Samuel Richardson
"All our pursuits, from childhood to manhood, are only trifles of different sorts and sizes, proportioned to our years and views."
by Samuel Richardson
"Honeymoon lasts not nowadays above a fortnight."
by Samuel Richardson
"Love before marriage is absolutely necessary."
by Samuel Richardson
"Let a man do what he will by a single woman, the world is encouragingly apt to think Marriage a sufficient amends."
by Samuel Richardson
"Married people should not be quick to hear what is said by either when in ill humor."
by Samuel Richardson
"Shame is a fitter and generally a more effectual punishment for a child than beating."
by Samuel Richardson
"Quantity in food is more to be regarded than quality. A full meal is a great enemy both to study and industry."
by Samuel Richardson
"Men will bear many things from a kept mistress, which they would not bear from a wife."
by Samuel Richardson
"Calamity is the test of integrity."
by Samuel Richardson
"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."
by Samuel Richardson
"Every one, more or less, loves Power, yet those who most wish for it are seldom the fittest to be trusted with it."
by Samuel Richardson
"A beautiful woman must expect to be more accountable for her steps, than one less attractive."
by Samuel Richardson
"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."
by Samuel Richardson
"A husband's mother and his wife had generally better be visitors than inmates."
by Samuel Richardson
"A man may keep a woman, but not his estate."
by Samuel Richardson
"A Stander-by is often a better judge of the game than those that play."
by Samuel Richardson
"A widow's refusal of a lover is seldom so explicit as to exclude hope."
by Samuel Richardson
"All human excellence is but comparative. There may be persons who excel us, as much as we fancy we excel the meanest."
by Samuel Richardson
"Every scholar, I presume, is not, necessarily, a man of sense."
by Samuel Richardson
"For the human mind is seldom at stay: If you do not grow better, you will most undoubtedly grow worse."
by Samuel Richardson
"From sixteen to twenty, all women, kept in humor by their hopes and by their attractions, appear to be good-natured."
by Samuel Richardson
"Good men must be affectionate men."
by Samuel Richardson
"Great allowances ought to be made for the petulance of persons laboring under ill-health."
by Samuel Richardson
"Handsome husbands often make a wife's heart ache."
by Samuel Richardson
"Hope is the cordial that keeps life from stagnating."
by Samuel Richardson
"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."
by Samuel Richardson
"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."
by Samuel Richardson
"It is better to be thought perverse than insincere."
by Samuel Richardson
"It is much easier to find fault with others, than to be faultless ourselves."
by Samuel Richardson
"It may be very generous in one person to offer what it would be ungenerous in another to accept."
by Samuel Richardson
"Love gratified is love satisfied, and love satisfied is indifference begun."
by Samuel Richardson
"Love is not a volunteer thing."
by Samuel Richardson
"Love will draw an elephant through a key-hole."
by Samuel Richardson
"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."
by Samuel Richardson
"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."
by Samuel Richardson
"Men generally are afraid of a wife who has more understanding than themselves."
by Samuel Richardson
"Necessity may well be called the mother of invention but calamity is the test of integrity."
by Samuel Richardson
"Nothing in human nature is so God-like as the disposition to do good to our fellow-creatures."
by Samuel Richardson
"Nothing dries sooner than tears."
by Samuel Richardson
"O! what a Godlike Power is that of doing Good! I envy the Rich and the Great for nothing else!"
by Samuel Richardson
"Parents sometimes make not those allowances for youth, which, when young, they wished to be made for themselves."
by Samuel Richardson
"People who act like angels ought to have angels to deal with."
by Samuel Richardson
"People of little understanding are most apt to be angry when their sense is called into question."
by Samuel Richardson
"Prejudices in disfavor of a person fix deeper, and are much more difficult to be removed, than prejudices in favor."
by Samuel Richardson
"Smatterers in learning are the most opinionated."
by Samuel Richardson
"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."
by Samuel Richardson
"Sorrow makes an ugly face odious."
by Samuel Richardson
"The Cause of Women is generally the Cause of Virtue."
by Samuel Richardson
"The companion of an evening, and the companion for life, require very different qualifications."
by Samuel Richardson
"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."
by Samuel Richardson
"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."
by Samuel Richardson
"The life of a good man is a continual warfare with his passions."
by Samuel Richardson
"The laws were not made so much for the direction of good men, as to circumscribe the bad."
by Samuel Richardson
"The little words in the Republic of Letters, like the little folks in a nation, are the most useful and significant."
by Samuel Richardson
"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."
by Samuel Richardson
"The pleasures of the mighty are obtained by the tears of the poor."
by Samuel Richardson
"The plays and sports of children are as salutary to them as labor and work are to grown persons."
by Samuel Richardson
"The World, thinking itself affronted by superior merit, takes delight to bring it down to its own level."
by Samuel Richardson
"There are men who think themselves too wise to be religious."
by Samuel Richardson
"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."
by Samuel Richardson
"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."
by Samuel Richardson
"There is but one pride pardonable; that of being above doing a base or dishonorable action."
by Samuel Richardson
"There would be no supporting life were we to feel quite as poignantly for others as we do for ourselves."
by Samuel Richardson
"Those who have least to do are generally the most busy people in the world."
by Samuel Richardson
"Those who can least bear a jest upon themselves, will be most diverted with one passed on others."
by Samuel Richardson
"Those we dislike can do nothing to please us."
by Samuel Richardson
"Those who will bear much, shall have much to bear."
by Samuel Richardson
"To be a clergyman, and all that is compassionate and virtuous, ought to be the same thing."
by Samuel Richardson
"Vast is the field of Science. The more a man knows, the more he will find he has to know."
by Samuel Richardson
"We are all very ready to believe what we like."
by Samuel Richardson
"What likelihood is there of corrupting a man who has no ambition?"
by Samuel Richardson
"What we want to tell, we wish our friend to have curiosity to hear."
by Samuel Richardson
"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."
by Samuel Richardson
"Where words are restrained, the eyes often talk a great deal."
by Samuel Richardson
"Women love to be called cruel, even when they are kindest."
by Samuel Richardson
"Women do not often fall in love with philosophers."
by Samuel Richardson
"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."
by Samuel Richardson
"Women are always most observed when they seem themselves least to observe, or to lay out for observation."
by Samuel Richardson
"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."
by Samuel Richardson
"Would Alexander, madman as he was, have been so much a madman, had it not been for Homer?"
by Samuel Richardson
"An acquaintance with the muses, in the education of youth, contributes not a little to soften the manners. It gives a delicate turn to the ima..."
by Samuel Richardson
"If the education and studies of children were suited to their inclinations and capacities, many would be made useful members of society that o..."
by Samuel Richardson
"If women would make themselves appear as elegant to an Husband, as they were desirous to appear to him while a Lover, the Rake, which all wome..."
by Samuel Richardson
"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..."
by Samuel Richardson
"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 b..."
by Samuel Richardson
"Marriage is a state that is attended with so much care and trouble, that it is a kind of faulty indulgence and selfishness to live single, in ..."
by Samuel Richardson
"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 inte..."
by Samuel Richardson
"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 go..."
by Samuel Richardson
"The first reading of a Will, where a person dies worth anything considerable, generally affords a true test of the relations' love to the dece..."
by Samuel Richardson
"The longer a woman remains single, the more apprehensive she will be of entering into the state of wedlock. At seventeen or eighteen, a girl w..."
by Samuel Richardson
"Twenty-four is a prudent age for women to marry at."
by Samuel Richardson
"What a world is this! What is there in it desirable? The good we hope for so strangely mixed, that one knows not what to wish for! And one hal..."
by Samuel Richardson


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