Top 180 Samuel Richardson Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Love will draw an elephant through a key-hole.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

53. “Air and manners are more expressive than words.”

— Samuel Richardson

54. “Handsome husbands often make a wife’s heart ache.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

56. “The difference in the education of men and women must give the former great advantages over the latter, even where geniuses are equal.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

60. “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

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

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

— Samuel Richardson

64. “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

65. “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

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. “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

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

70. “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

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

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

— Samuel Richardson

75. “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

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

— Samuel Richardson

77. “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

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

81. “A good man will honor him who lives up to his religious profession, whatever it be.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

83. “The unhappy never want enemies.”

— Samuel Richardson

84. “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

85. “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

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

— Samuel Richardson

87. “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

88. “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

89. “Familiarity destroys reverence.”

— Samuel Richardson

90. “Nothing dries sooner than tears.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

94. “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

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

— Samuel Richardson

96. “What poor wretches are we, Harriet, men as well as women! We pray for long life; and what is the issue of our prayers, but leave to outlive our teeth and our friends, to stand in the way of our elbowing relations, and to change our swan-skins for skins of buff; which nevertheless will keep out neither cold nor infirmity?”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

98. “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

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson