Samuel richardson quotes

The most innocent heart is generally the most credulous.

Those who doubt themselves most generally err least.

The wisest among us is a fool in some things.

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

The coyest maids make the fondest wives.

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

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

There are men who think themselves too wise to be religious.

Those we dislike can do nothing to please us.

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

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.

Nothing dries sooner than tears.

I have my choice: who can wish for more? Free will enables us to do everything well while imposition makes a light burden heavy.

But let not those worthy young women, who may think themselves destined to a single life, repine over-much at their lot; since, possibly, if they have had no lovers, or having had one, two, or three, have not found a husband, they have had rather a miss than a loss, as men go.

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.

Nothing can be more wounding to a spirit not ungenerous, than a generous forgiveness.

Romances in general are calculated rather to fire the imagination, than to inform the judgment.

A beautiful woman must expect to be more accountable for her steps, than one less attractive.

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

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.

A departure from the truth was hardly ever known to be a single one.

Marriage is a state that is attended with so much care and trouble, that it is a kind of faulty indulgence and selfishness to livesingle, in order to avoid the difficulties it is attended with.

Parents cannot expect advice to have the same force upon their children as experience has upon themselves.

The life of a good man was a continual warfare with his passions.

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

All angry persons are to be treated, by the prudent, as children.

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.

The grace that makes every grace amiable is humility.

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.

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

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.

The unhappy never want enemies.

By my soul, I can neither eat, drink, nor sleep; nor, what's still worse, love any woman in the world but her.

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

Love will draw an elephant through a key-hole.

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

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.

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.

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

For tutors, although they may make youth learned, do not always make them virtuous.

We can all be good when we have no temptation or provocation to the contrary.

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

Angry men make themselves beds of nettles.

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?

The Cause of Women is generally the Cause of Virtue.

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

Twenty-four is a prudent age for women to marry at.

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

Sorrow makes an ugly face odious.

Smatterers in learning are the most opinionated.

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

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 half of mankind tormenting the other, and being tormented themselves in tormenting!

Necessity may well be called the mother of invention but calamity is the test of integrity.

Spiritual pride is the most dangerous and the most arrogant of all sorts of pride.

Handsome husbands often make a wife's heart ache.

Platonic love is platonic nonsense.

We have nothing to do, but to choose what is right, to be steady in the pursuit of it, and leave the issue to Providence.

Love before marriage is absolutely necessary.

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

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

The first step in achieving prosperity and wealth is learning to appreciate what you already have.

He only who gave life has a power over it.

We are all very ready to believe what we like.

Air and manners are more expressive than words.

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.

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

The uselessness and expensiveness of modern women multiply bachelors.

What the unpenetrating world call Humanity, is often no more than a weak mind pitying itself.

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

Love is not a volunteer thing.

A man who flatters a woman hopes either to find her a fool or to make her one.

Every thing is pretty that is young.

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.

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.

What pity that Religion and Love, which heighten our relish for the things of both worlds, should ever run the human heart into enthusiasm, superstition, or uncharitableness!

Nothing in human nature is so God-like as the disposition to do good to our fellow-creatures.

A widow's refusal of a lover is seldom so explicit as to exclude hope.

Women love those best (whether men, women, or children) who give them most pain.

It is better to be thought perverse than insincere.

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 will plunge into it, sometimes without either fear or wit; at twenty, she will begin to think; at twenty-four, will weigh and discriminate; at twenty-eight, will be afraid of venturing; at thirty, will turn about, and look down the hill she has ascended, and sometimes rejoice, sometimes repent, that she has gained that summit sola.

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

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.

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.

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

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!

Wicked words are the prelude to wicked deeds.

Distresses, however heavy at the time, appear light, and even joyous, to the reflecting mind, when worthily overcome.

Love gratified is love satisfied, and love satisfied is indifference begun.

Women do not often fall in love with philosophers.

Women love to be called cruel, even when they are kindest.

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.

The woman who thinks meanly of herself is any man's purchase.

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

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.

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.

Virtue only is the true beauty.

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.

Why Do We Procrastinate? P - postponing life R - resisting change O - overly cautious C - contemplating course of action R - reasoning and justifying A - afraid of success S - summoning up some courage T - trouble moving forward I - inability to see the outcome N - not able to trust in your abilities to make decisions A - attempting to control the situation T - time to reflect on your motives E - erodes progress

Calamity is the test of integrity.

People hardly ever do anything in anger, of which they do not repent.

Over-niceness may be under-niceness.

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

From sixteen to twenty, all women, kept in humor by their hopes and by their attractions, appear to be good-natured.

Men generally are afraid of a wife who has more understanding than themselves.

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

Men know no medium: They will either, spaniel-like, fawn at your feet, or be ready to leap into your lap.

Whom we fear more than love, we are not far from hating.

Reverence to a woman in courtship is less to be dispensed with, as, generally, there is but little of it shown afterwards.

Of what violences, murders, depredations, have not the epic poets, from all antiquity, been the occasion, by propagating false honor, false glory, and false religion?

The person who is worthiest to live, is fittest to die.

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.

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.

I never knew a man who deserved to be thought well of for his morals who had a slight opinion of our Sex in general.

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

Youth is rather to be pitied than envied by people in years since it is doomed to toil through the rugged road of life which the others have passed through, in search of happiness that is not to be met with in it and that, at the highest, can be compounded for only by the blessing of a contented mind.

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

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

Men are less forgiving than women.

Beauty is an accidental and transient good.

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.

I know not my own heart if it be not absolutely free.

Hope is the cordial that keeps life from stagnating.

In all Works of This, and of the Dramatic Kind, STORY, or AMUSEMENT, should be considered as little more than the Vehicle to the more necessary INSTRUCTION.

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.

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