Samuel Richardson quotes:

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Nothing in human nature is so God-like as the disposition to do good to our fellow-creatures.
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.
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!
Quantity in diet is more to be regarded than quality. A full meal is a great enemy both to study and industry.
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.
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.
Great allowances ought to be made for the petulance of persons laboring under ill-health.
The life of a good man is a continual warfare with his passions.
The little words in the Republic of Letters, like the little folks in a nation, are the most useful and significant.
Handsome husbands often make a wife's heart ache.
A husband's mother and his wife had generally better be visitors than inmates.
Parents sometimes make not those allowances for youth, which, when young, they wished to be made for themselves.
Love before marriage is absolutely necessary.
All our pursuits, from childhood to manhood, are only trifles of different sorts and sizes, proportioned to our years and views.
The plays and sports of children are as salutary to them as labor and work are to grown persons.
What likelihood is there of corrupting a man who has no ambition?
The Cause of Women is generally the Cause of Virtue.
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.
All human excellence is but comparative. There may be persons who excel us, as much as we fancy we excel the meanest.
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.
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.
People of little understanding are most apt to be angry when their sense is called into question.
People who act like angels ought to have angels to deal with.
There is but one pride pardonable; that of being above doing a base or dishonorable action.
Women love to be called cruel, even when they are kindest.
Those who have least to do are generally the most busy people in the world.
Good men must be affectionate men.
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.
Men generally are afraid of a wife who has more understanding than themselves.
Where words are restrained, the eyes often talk a great deal."
That dangerous but too commonly received notion, that a reformed rake makes the best husband.
Necessity may well be called the mother of invention but calamity is the test of integrity.
Calamity is the test of integrity.
To be a clergyman, and all that is compassionate and virtuous, ought to be the same thing.
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.
Love will draw an elephant through a key-hole.
A widow's refusal of a lover is seldom so explicit as to exclude hope.
Men know no medium: They will either, spaniel-like, fawn at your feet, or be ready to leap into your lap.
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.
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.
Honeymoon lasts not nowadays above a fortnight.
O! what a Godlike Power is that of doing Good! I envy the Rich and the Great for nothing else!
What we look upon as our greatest unhappiness in a difficulty we are involved in, may possibly be the evil hastening to its crisis, and happy days may ensue.
What pleasure can those over-happy persons know, who, from their affluence and luxury, always eat before they are hungry and drink before they are thirsty?
It is a happy art to know when one has said enough. I would leave my hearers wishing me to say more rather than give them cause toshow, by their inattention, that I had said too much.
The readiness with which women are apt to forgive the men who have deceived other women; and that inconsiderate notion of too many of them that a reformed rake makes the best husband, are great encouragements to vile men to continue their profligacy.
It is better to be thought perverse than insincere.
Those who can least bear a jest upon themselves, will be most diverted with one passed on others.
The richest princes and the poorest beggars are to have one great and just judge at the last day who will not distinguish betweenthem according to their ranks when in life but according to the neglected opportunities afforded to each. How much greater then, as the opportunities were greater, must be the condemnation of the one than of the other?
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.
There cannot be any great happiness in the married life except each in turn give up his or her own humors and lesser inclinations.
The World, thinking itself affronted by superior merit, takes delight to bring it down to its own level.
The World is not enough used to this way of writing, to the moment. It knows not that in the minutiae lie often the unfoldings ofthe Story, as well as of the heart; and judges of an action undecided, as if it were absolutely decided.
Spiritual pride is the most dangerous and the most arrogant of all sorts of pride.
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.
Angry men make themselves beds of nettles.
Over-niceness may be under-niceness.
Smatterers in learning are the most opinionated.
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.
Platonic love is platonic nonsense.
Every one, more or less, loves Power, yet those who most wish for it are seldom the fittest to be trusted with it.
Wicked words are the prelude to wicked deeds.
Tutors who make youth learned do not always make them virtuous.
How true is the observation that unrequited love turns to deepest hate.
I will be a Friend to you, and you shall take care of my Linen
Love gratified is love satisfied, and love satisfied is indifference begun.
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.
The companion of an evening, and the companion for life, require very different qualifications.
Sorrow makes an ugly face odious.
The uselessness and expensiveness of modern women multiply bachelors.
A prudent person, having to do with a designing one, will always distrust most when appearances are fairest.
A beautiful woman must expect to be more accountable for her steps, than one less attractive.
Let a man do what he will by a single woman, the world is encouragingly apt to think Marriage a sufficient amends.
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.
From sixteen to twenty, all women, kept in humor by their hopes and by their attractions, appear to be good-natured.
Would Alexander, madman as he was, have been so much a madman, had it not been for Homer?
Married people should not be quick to hear what is said by either when in ill humor.
Men will bear many things from a kept mistress, which they would not bear from a wife.
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.
Hope is the cordial that keeps life from stagnating.
Where words are restrained, the eyes often talk a great deal.
Shame is a fitter and generally a more effectual punishment for a child than beating.
It is much easier to find fault with others, than to be faultless ourselves.
The laws were not made so much for the direction of good men, as to circumscribe the bad.
Nothing dries sooner than tears.
What we want to tell, we wish our friend to have curiosity to hear.
Women do not often fall in love with philosophers.
We are all very ready to believe what we like.
...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!
A departure from the truth was hardly ever known to be a single one.
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.
A fop takes great pains to hang out a sign, by his dress, of what he has within.
A good man will extend his munificence to the industrious poor of all persuasions reduced by age, infirmity, or accident; to thosewho labour under incurable maladies; and to the youth of either sex, who are capable of beginning the world with advantage, but have not the means.
A good man will honor him who lives up to his religious profession, whatever it be.
A good man will not engage even in a national cause, without examining the justice of it.
A man who flatters a woman hopes either to find her a fool or to make her one.
A man who insults the modesty of a woman, as good as tells her that he has seen something in her conduct that warranted his presumption.
A Stander-by is often a better judge of the game than those that play.
Air and manners are more expressive than words.
All angry persons are to be treated, by the prudent, as children.
All that hoops are good for is to clean dirty shoes and keep fellows at a distance.
An acknowledged love sanctifies every little freedom; and little freedoms beget great ones.
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.
An honest heart is not to be trusted with itself in bad company.
Be sure don't let people's telling you, you are pretty, puff you up; for you did not make yourself, and so can have no praise due to you for it. It is virtue and goodness only, that make the true beauty.
Beauty is an accidental and transient good.
By my soul, I can neither eat, drink, nor sleep; nor, what's still worse, love any woman in the world but her.
Chastity, like piety, is a uniform grace.
Distresses, however heavy at the time, appear light, and even joyous, to the reflecting mind, when worthily overcome.
Every scholar, I presume, is not, necessarily, a man of sense.
Every thing is pretty that is young.
Evil courses can yield pleasure no longer than while thought and reflection can be kept off.
For the human mind is seldom at stay: If you do not grow better, you will most undoubtedly grow worse.
Friendly satire may be compared to a fine lancet, which gently breathes a vein for health's sake.
Friendship is the perfection of love, and superior to love; it is love purified, exalted, proved by experience and a consent of minds. Love, Madam, may, and love does, often stop short of friendship.
He only who gave life has a power over it.
Honesty is good sense, politeness, amiableness,--all in one.
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.
I have my choice: who can wish for more? Free will enables us to do everything well while imposition makes a light burden heavy.

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