Top 180 Samuel Richardson Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Samuel Richardson

2. “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.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

4. “Calamity is the test of integrity.”

— Samuel Richardson

5. “The pleasures of the mighty are obtained by the tears of the poor.”

— Samuel Richardson

6. “The uselessness and expensiveness of modern women multiply bachelors.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

8. “The most innocent heart is generally the most credulous.”

— Samuel Richardson

9. “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.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

12. “The life of a good man is a continual warfare with his passions.”

— Samuel Richardson

13. “Those who doubt themselves most generally err least.”

— Samuel Richardson

14. “Virtue only is the true beauty.”

— Samuel Richardson

15. “Platonic love is platonic nonsense.”

— Samuel Richardson

16. “Chastity, like piety, is a uniform grace.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

19. “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.”

— Samuel Richardson

20. “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

21. “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.”

— Samuel Richardson

22. “We all know by theory that there is no permanent happiness in this life: But the weight of the precept is not felt in the same manner as when it is confirmed to us by a heavy calamity.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

25. “We are all very ready to believe what we like.”

— Samuel Richardson

26. “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.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

28. “The coyest maids make the fondest wives.”

— Samuel Richardson

29. “Friendly satire may be compared to a fine lancet, which gently breathes a vein for health’s sake.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

31. “Men are less forgiving than women.”

— Samuel Richardson

32. “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.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

34. “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.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

37. “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.”

— Samuel Richardson

38. “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

39. “Parents sometimes make not those allowances for youth, which, when young, they wished to be made for themselves.”

— Samuel Richardson

40. “Those we dislike can do nothing to please us.”

— Samuel Richardson

41. “Sorrow makes an ugly face odious.”

— Samuel Richardson

42. “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.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

44. “All that hoops are good for is to clean dirty shoes and keep fellows at a distance.”

— Samuel Richardson

45. “Those who respect age, deserve to live to be old, and to be respected themselves.”

— Samuel Richardson

46. “Love is not a volunteer thing.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

48. “Is it not strange, that Love borders so much upon Hate? But this wicked Love is not like the true virtuous Love, to be sure: That and Hatred must be as far off, as Light and Darkness. And how must this Hate have been increased, if he had met with a base Compliance, after his wicked Will had been gratify’d?”

— Samuel Richardson

49. “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!”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson