Top 180 Samuel Richardson Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 3 of 4

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

104. “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

105. “Beauty is an accidental and transient good.”

— Samuel Richardson

106. “If a woman knows a man to be a libertine, yet will, without scruple, give him her company, he will think half the ceremony between them is over; and will probably only want an opportunity to make her repent of her confidence in him.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

108. “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.”

— Samuel Richardson

109. “Honeymoon lasts not nowadays above a fortnight.”

— Samuel Richardson

110. “Too liberal self-accusations are generally but so many traps for acquittal with applause.”

— Samuel Richardson

111. “Good men must be affectionate men.”

— Samuel Richardson

112. “A widow’s refusal of a lover is seldom so explicit as to exclude hope.”

— Samuel Richardson

113. “All our pursuits, from childhood to manhood, are only trifles of different sorts and sizes, proportioned to our years and views.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

115. “Love before marriage is absolutely necessary.”

— Samuel Richardson

116. “Every thing is pretty that is young.”

— Samuel Richardson

117. “Where the world is inclined to favour, replied I, it is apt to over-rate, as much as it will under-rate where it disfavours.”

— Samuel Richardson

118. “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

119. “Things we wish to be true are apt to gain too ready credit with us.”

— Samuel Richardson

120. “Honesty is good sense, politeness, amiableness, – all in one.”

— Samuel Richardson

121. “An acknowledged love sanctifies every little freedom; and little freedoms beget great ones.”

— Samuel Richardson

122. “It is better to be thought perverse than insincere.”

— Samuel Richardson

123. “The Cause of Women is generally the Cause of Virtue.”

— Samuel Richardson

124. “The grace that makes every grace amiable is humility.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

126. “A prudent person, having to do with a designing one, will always distrust most when appearances are fairest.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

128. “The World, thinking itself affronted by superior merit, takes delight to bring it down to its own level.”

— Samuel Richardson

129. “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?”

— Samuel Richardson

130. “What honest man would not rather be the sufferer than the defrauder?”

— Samuel Richardson

131. “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.”

— Samuel Richardson

132. “It is but shaping the bribe to the taste, and every one has his price.”

— Samuel Richardson

133. “Women do not often fall in love with philosophers.”

— Samuel Richardson

134. “Old men, imagining themselves under obligation to young paramours, seldom keep any thing from their knowledge.”

— Samuel Richardson

135. “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.”

— Samuel Richardson

136. “Evil courses can yield pleasure no longer than while thought and reflection can be kept off.”

— Samuel Richardson

137. “Tutors who make youth learned do not always make them virtuous.”

— Samuel Richardson

138. “The woman who thinks meanly of herself is any man’s purchase.”

— Samuel Richardson

139. “The laws were not made so much for the direction of good men, as to circumscribe the bad.”

— Samuel Richardson

140. “A fop takes great pains to hang out a sign, by his dress, of what he has within.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

143. “It is unworthy of a man of spirit to be sollicitous to keep himself within the boundaries of human laws, on no other motive than to avoid the temporal inconveniencies attending the breach of them. The laws were not made so much for the direction of good men, as to circumscribe the bad.”

— Samuel Richardson

144. “From her instructions, I had an early notion, that it was much more noble to forgive an injury than to resent it: and to give a life than to take it.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

146. “Smatterers in learning are the most opinionated.”

— Samuel Richardson

147. “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.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

149. “That she thought me the prettiest creature she ever beheld. – Creature was her word – We are all creatures, ’tis true: But I think I never was more displeased with the sound of the word Creature, than I was from Lady Anne.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson