Samuel Richardson Quotes

98 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Samuel Richardson
A fop takes great pains to hang out a sign, by his dress, of what he has within.

Samuel Richardson
An acknowledged love sanctifies every little freedom; and little freedoms beget great ones.

Samuel Richardson
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.

Samuel Richardson
All women, from the countess to the cook-maid, are put into high good humor with themselves when a man is taken with them at firstsight. And be they ever so plain, they will find twenty good reasons to defend the judgment of such a man.

Samuel Richardson
Men and women are brothers and sisters; they are not of different species; and what need be obtained to know both, but to allow for different modes of education, for situation and constitution, or perhaps I should rather say, for habits, whether good or bad.

Samuel Richardson
The world, the wise world, that never is wrong itself, judges always by events. And if he should use me ill, then I shall be blamed for trusting him: if well, O then I did right, to be sure!--But how would my censurers act in my case, before the event justifies or condemns the action, is the question.

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

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

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

Samuel Richardson
Women are sometimes drawn in to believe against probability by the unwillingness they have to doubt their own merit.

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

Samuel Richardson
If a woman knows a man to be a libertine, yet will, without scruple, give him her company, he will think half the ceremony between them is over; and will probably only want an opportunity to make her repent of her confidence in him.

Samuel Richardson
The wife of a self-admirer must expect a very cold and negligent husband.

Samuel Richardson
There is a good and a bad light in which every thing that befalls us may be taken. If the human mind will busy itself to make theworst of every disagreeable occurrence, it will never want woe.

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 intelligible wink from the window.

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

Samuel Richardson
Women's eyes are wanderers, and too often bring home guests that are very troublesome to them, and whom, once introduced, they cannot get out of the house.

Samuel Richardson
The seeds of Death are sown in us when we begin to live, and grow up till, like rampant weeds, they choak the tender flower of life.

Samuel Richardson
The first vice of the first woman was curiosity, and it runs through the whole sex.

Samuel Richardson
There cannot be any great happiness in the married life except each in turn give up his or her own humors and lesser inclinations.

Samuel Richardson
An honest heart is not to be trusted with itself in bad company.

Samuel Richardson
Those commands of superiors which are contrary to our first duties are not to be obeyed.

Samuel Richardson
Superstitious notions propagated in infancy are hardly ever totally eradicate, not even in minds grown strong enough to despise the like credulous folly in others.

Samuel Richardson