Richard Steele Quotes

59 Sourced Quotes

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

Richard Steele
A modest person seldom fails to gain the goodwill of those he converses with, because nobody envies a man who does not appear to be pleased with himself.

Richard Steele
I look upon it as a Point of Morality, to be obliged by those who endeavour to oblige me

Richard Steele
The world will never be in any manner of order or tranquility until men are firmly convinced that conscience, honor and credit are all in one interest

Richard Steele
Violins are the lively, forward, importunate wits, that distinguish themselves by the flourishes of imagination, sharpness of repartee, glances of satire, and bear away the upper part in every consort.

Richard Steele
Pride destroys all symmetry and grace, and affectation is a more terrible enemy to fine faces than the small-pox.

Richard Steele
It is a very melancholy reflection that men are usually so weak that it is absolutely necessary for them to know sorrow and pain to be in their right senses.

Richard Steele
Nothing is more silly than the pleasure some people take in "speaking their minds." A man of this make will say a rude thing for the mere pleasure of saying it, when an opposite behavior, full as innocent, might have preserved his friend, or made his fortune.

Richard Steele
It has been a sort of maxim, that the greatest art is to conceal art; but I know not how, among some people we meet with, their greatest cunning is to appear cunning.

Richard Steele
He that has sense knows that learning is not knowledge, but rather the art of using it.

Richard Steele
The world is grown so full of dissimulation and compliment, that men's words are hardly any signification of their thoughts.

Richard Steele
Zeal for the public good is the characteristic of a man of honor and a gentleman, and must take the place of pleasures, profits and all other private gratifications.

Richard Steele
The person, whom you favored with a loan, if he be a good man, will think himself in your debt after he has paid you.

Richard Steele
Whenever you commend, add your reasons for doing so; it is this which distinguishes the approbation of a man of sense from the flattery of sycophants and admiration of fools.

Richard Steele
It is the duty of a great person so to demean himself, as that whatever endowments he may have, he may appear to value himself upon no qualities but such as any man may arrive at.

Richard Steele
The praise of an ignorant man is only good-will, and you should receive his kindness as he is a good neighbor in society, and not as a good judge of your actions in point of fame and reputation.

Richard Steele
A man cannot have an idea of perfection in another, which he was never sensible of in himself.

Richard Steele
It is a certain sign of an ill heart to be inclined to defamation. They who are harmless and innocent can have no gratification that way; but it ever arises from a neglect of what is laudable in a man's self.

Richard Steele
The survivorship of a worthy man in his son is a pleasure scarce inferior to the hopes of the continuance of his own life.

Richard Steele
It is an endless and frivolous Pursuit to act by any other Rule than the Care of satisfying our own Minds in what we do

Richard Steele
It is a wonderful thing that so many, and they not reckoned absurd, shall entertain those with whom they converse by giving them the history of their pains and aches and imagine such narrations their quota of conversation.

Richard Steele
Such is the weakness of our nature, that when men are a little exalted in their condition they immediately conceive they have additional senses, and their capacities enlarged not only above other men, but above human comprehension itself.

Richard Steele
No woman is capable of being beautiful who is not incapable of being false.

Richard Steele
Pleasure, when it is a man's chief purpose, disappoints itself; and the constant application to it palls the faculty of enjoying it.

Richard Steele
Pleasure seizes the whole man who addicts himself to it, and will not give him leisure for any good office in life which contradicts the gayety of the present hour.

Richard Steele
Mutual good humor is a dress we ought to appear in wherever we meet, and we should make no mention of what concerns ourselves, without it be of matters wherein our friends ought to rejoice.

Richard Steele
There is hardly that person to be found who is not more concerned for the reputation of wit and sense, than honesty and virtue.

Richard Steele
When a man has no design but to speak plain truth, he may say a great deal in a very narrow compass.

Richard Steele
Since we cannot promise our selves constant health, let us endeavour at such temper as may be our best support in the decay of it.

Richard Steele
I love to consider an Infidel, whether distinguished by the title of deist, atheist, or free-thinker, by three different lights, in his solitude, his afflictions, and his last moments.... [In these situations such people show themselves] in solitude, incapable or rapture or elevation,... in distress, [with] a halter or a pistol the only refuge [they] can fly to,... [and liable to conversion] at the approach of death.

Richard Steele