Top 70 Richard Steele Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Modesty never rages, never murmurs, never pouts; when it is ill-treated, it pines, it beseeches, it languishes.”

— Richard Steele

2. “Fire and swords are slow engines of destruction, compared to the tongue of a Gossip.”

— Richard Steele

3. “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

4. “Simplicity of all things is the hardest to be copy.”

— Richard Steele

5. “A Daughter: The companion, the friend, and the confidant of her mother, and the object of a pleasure something like the love between the angels to her father.”

— Richard Steele

6. “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

7. “I have often lamented that we cannot close our ears with as much ease as which we close our eyes.”

— Richard Steele

8. “He that has sense knows that learning is not knowledge, but rather the art of using it.”

— Richard Steele

9. “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

10. “People spend their lives in the service of their passions instead of employing their passions in the service of their lives.”

— Richard Steele

11. “Praise from an enemy is the most pleasing of all commendations.”

— Richard Steele

12. “There are so few who can grow old with a good grace.”

— Richard Steele

13. “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

14. “That man never grows old who keeps a child in his heart.”

— Richard Steele

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

— Richard Steele

16. “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

17. “I know of no manner of speaking so offensive as that of giving praise, and closing it with an exception.”

— Richard Steele

18. “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

19. “Though her mien carries much more invitation than command, to behold her is an immediate check to loose behaviour; to love her was a liberal education.”

— Richard Steele

20. “Nothing can atone for the lack of modesty; without which beauty is ungraceful and wit detestable.”

— Richard Steele

21. “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

22. “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

23. “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

24. “Vanity makes people ridiculous, pride odious, and ambition terrible.”

— Richard Steele

25. “The fool within himself is the object of pity, until he is flattered.”

— Richard Steele

26. “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

27. “Whoever would be wise should read the Proverbs; whoever would be holy should read the Psalms.”

— Richard Steele

28. “Will. Honeycomb calls these over-offended ladies the outrageously virtuous.”

— Richard Steele

29. “There is no Pleasure like that of receiving Praise from the Praiseworthy.”

— Richard Steele

30. “A healthy old fellow, who is not a fool, is the happiest creature living.”

— Richard Steele

31. “I love to consider an Infidel, whether distinguished by the title of deist, atheist, or free-thinker.”

— Richard Steele

32. “A man advanced in years that thinks fit to look back on his former life, and calls that only life which was passed with satisfaction and enjoyment, excluding all parts which were not pleasant to him, will find himself very young, if not in infancy.”

— Richard Steele

33. “No woman is capable of being beautiful who is not incapable of being false.”

— Richard Steele

34. “I look upon it as a Point of Morality, to be obliged by those who endeavour to oblige me.”

— Richard Steele

35. “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

36. “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

37. “Since our persons are not of our own making, when they are such as appear defective or uncomely, it is, methinks, an honest and laudable fortitude to dare to be ugly.”

— Richard Steele

38. “Whether a pretty woman grants or withholds her favors, she always likes to be asked for them.”

— Richard Steele

39. “A little in drink, but at all times your faithful husband.”

— Richard Steele

40. “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

41. “A woman seldom writes her mind but in her postscript.”

— Richard Steele

42. “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

43. “And I pray mark how he begins: he sets not up trophies to himself, but triumphs in his God – “I will love thee, O Lord, my strength.” As the love of God is the beginning of all our mercies, so love to God should be the end and effect of them all. As the stream leads us to the spring, so all the gifts of God must lead us to the giver of them.”

— Richard Steele

44. “The world is grown so full of dissimulation and compliment, that men’s words are hardly any signification of their thoughts.”

— Richard Steele

45. “It is an impertinent and unreasonable fault in conversation for one man to take up all the discourse.”

— Richard Steele

46. “When a man is not disposed to hear music, there is not a more disagreeable sound in harmony than that of the violin.”

— Richard Steele

47. “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

48. “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

49. “I cannot think of any character below the flatterer, except he who envies him.”

— Richard Steele

50. “The insupportable labor of doing nothing.”

— Richard Steele