Top 180 Samuel Richardson Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Air and manners are more expressive than words.”

— Samuel Richardson

52. “Love gratified is love satisfied, and love satisfied is indifference begun.”

— Samuel Richardson

53. “Wicked words are the prelude to wicked deeds.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

55. “The little words in the Republic of Letters, like the little folks in a nation, are the most useful and significant.”

— Samuel Richardson

56. “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.”

— Samuel Richardson

57. “An honest heart is not to be trusted with itself in bad company.”

— Samuel Richardson

58. “Tired of myself longing for what I have not.”

— Samuel Richardson

59. “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.”

— Samuel Richardson

60. “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

61. “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.”

— Samuel Richardson

62. “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

63. “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.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

65. “All human excellence is but comparative. There may be persons who excel us, as much as we fancy we excel the meanest.”

— Samuel Richardson

66. “Even now that I have concluded this moving recapitulation, it seems as nothing; and the whole world, my dear is as a bit of dirt under my feet.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

68. “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

69. “The person who will bear much shall have much to bear, all the world through.”

— Samuel Richardson

70. “O! what a Godlike Power is that of doing Good! I envy the Rich and the Great for nothing else!”

— Samuel Richardson

71. “That dangerous but too commonly received notion, that a reformed rake makes the best husband.”

— Samuel Richardson

72. “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

73. “She who is more ashamed of dishonesty than of poverty will not be easily overcome.”

— Samuel Richardson

74. “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

75. “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

76. “People who act like angels ought to have angels to deal with.”

— Samuel Richardson

77. “And pray, said I, walking on, how came I to be his Property? What Right has he in me, but such as a Thief may plead to stolen Goods?”

— Samuel Richardson

78. “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.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

81. “Nothing dries sooner than tears.”

— Samuel Richardson

82. “Over-niceness may be under-niceness.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

84. “Well, I don’t care: This life is but a passage, a short passage, to a better: And let one jostle, and another elbow; another push me, because they know the weakest must give way; yet I will endeavour steadily to pursue my course, till I get thro’ it, and into broad and open day.”

— Samuel Richardson

85. “The unhappy never want enemies.”

— Samuel Richardson

86. “Familiarity destroys reverence.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

88. “The wisest among us is a fool in some things.”

— Samuel Richardson

89. “It may be very generous in one person to offer what it would be ungenerous in another to accept.”

— Samuel Richardson

90. “But these great minds cannot avoid doing extraordinary things!”

— Samuel Richardson

91. “Hope is the cordial that keeps life from stagnating.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

95. “This, I suppose, makes me such a sauce-box, and bold-face, and a creature, and all because I won’t be a sauce-box and bold-face indeed.”

— Samuel Richardson

96. “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.”

— Samuel Richardson

97. “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

98. “The tenderest and most generous minds, when harshly treated, become generally the most inflexible.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

100. “It was most gracefully done: But see, Lucy, the example of a good and generous man can sometimes alter natures; and covetous men, I have heard it observed, when their hearts are open’d, often act nobly.”

— Samuel Richardson