Top 180 Samuel Richardson Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “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

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

104. “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

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

111. “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

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

114. “Good men must be affectionate men.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

117. “Love before marriage is absolutely necessary.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

119. “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

120. “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

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

125. “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

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

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

— Samuel Richardson

130. “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

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

134. “Many a man has been ashamed of his wicked attempts, when he has been repulsed, that would never have been ashamed of them, had he succeeded.”

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

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

— Samuel Richardson

142. “There are men who think themselves too wise to be religious.”

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

— Samuel Richardson

147. “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

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

— Samuel Richardson

149. “We have nothing to do, but to choose what is right, to be steady in the pursuit of it, and leave the issue to Providence.”

— Samuel Richardson

150. “If women would make themselves appear as elegant to an Husband, as they were desirous to appear to him while a Lover, the Rake, which all women love, would last longer in the Husband than it generally does.”

— Samuel Richardson