Top 180 Samuel Richardson Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “What pity that Religion and Love, which heighten our relish for the things of both worlds, should ever run the human heart into enthusiasm, superstition, or uncharitableness!”

— Samuel Richardson

152. “Every scholar, I presume, is not, necessarily, a man of sense.”

— Samuel Richardson

153. “What we want to tell, we wish our friend to have curiosity to hear.”

— Samuel Richardson

154. “Tis certain that Morality is an indispensable Requisite of true Religion, and there can be none without it. But it would become the Pride and Ignorance of Pagans only, to magnify it, as the Whole of what is necessary.”

— Samuel Richardson

155. “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

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

— Samuel Richardson

157. “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

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

— Samuel Richardson

159. “That cruelty which children are permitted to show to birds and other animals will most probably exert itself on their fellow creatures when at years of maturity.”

— Samuel Richardson

160. “What we look upon as our greatest unhappiness in a difficulty we are involved in, may possibly be the evil hastening to its crisis, and happy days may ensue.”

— Samuel Richardson

161. “From sixteen to twenty, all women, kept in humor by their hopes and by their attractions, appear to be good-natured.”

— Samuel Richardson

162. “Twenty-four is a prudent age for women to marry at.”

— Samuel Richardson

163. “Great allowances ought to be made for the petulance of persons laboring under ill-health.”

— Samuel Richardson

164. “I am not apt to run into grave declamations against the times:.”

— Samuel Richardson

165. “There hardly can be a greater difference between any two men, than there too often is, between the same man, a lover and a husband.”

— Samuel Richardson

166. “What pleasure can those over-happy persons know, who, from their affluence and luxury, always eat before they are hungry and drink before they are thirsty?”

— Samuel Richardson

167. “All angry persons are to be treated, by the prudent, as children.”

— Samuel Richardson

168. “I am not to know the contents of his Letter. The hearts of us women, when we are urged to give way to a clandestine and unequal address, or when inclined to favour such a one, are apt, and are pleaded with, to rise against the notions of bargain and sale. Smithfield bargains, you Londoners call them:.”

— Samuel Richardson

169. “I have often heard my grandfather observe, that men of truly great and brave spirits are most tender and merciful; and that, on the contrary, men of base and low minds are cruel, tyrannical, insolent, where-ever they have power.”

— Samuel Richardson

170. “Men know no medium: They will either, spaniel-like, fawn at your feet, or be ready to leap into your lap.”

— Samuel Richardson

171. “To be a clergyman, and all that is compassionate and virtuous, ought to be the same thing.”

— Samuel Richardson

172. “Those who can least bear a jest upon themselves, will be most diverted with one passed on others.”

— Samuel Richardson

173. “When we reflect upon the cruelties daily practised upon such of the animal creation as are given us for food, or which we ensnarefor our diversion, we shall be obliged to own that there is more of the savage in human nature than we are aware of.”

— Samuel Richardson

174. “Women’s eyes are wanderers, and too often bring home guests that are very troublesome to them, and whom, once introduced, they cannot get out of the house.”

— Samuel Richardson

175. “Marry first, and love will come after is a shocking assertion; since a thousand things may happen to make the state but barely tolerable, when it is entered into with mutual affection.”

— Samuel Richardson

176. “They will very probably, by remembring past mistakes, avoid many inconveniencies into which forgetfulness will run you lively ones.”

— Samuel Richardson

177. “There would be no supporting life were we to feel quite as poignantly for others as we do for ourselves.”

— Samuel Richardson

178. “Angry men make themselves beds of nettles.”

— Samuel Richardson

179. “You say that if a woman resolves not to marry till she finds herself addressed to by a man of strict virtue, she must be for ever single. If this be true, what wicked creatures are men! What a dreadful abuse of passions, given them for the noblest purposes, are they guilty of!”

— Samuel Richardson

180. “Were it but to avoid an interview with a father who seem’d to have been too much used to womens tears to be moved by them;.”

— Samuel Richardson

181. “Women who have had no lovers, or having had one, two or three, have not found a husband, have perhaps rather had a miss than a loss, as men go.”

— Samuel Richardson

182. “A good man will not engage even in a national cause, without examining the justice of it.”

— Samuel Richardson

183. “The person who is worthiest to live, is fittest to die.”

— Samuel Richardson

184. “Married people should not be quick to hear what is said by either when in ill humor.”

— Samuel Richardson

185. “He only who gave life has a power over it.”

— Samuel Richardson

186. “A Stander-by is often a better judge of the game than those that play.”

— Samuel Richardson

187. “Sir John gave us such an account of Sir Hargrave, as helped me not only in the character I have given of him, but let me know that he is a very dangerous and enterprising man. He says, that laughing and light as he is in company, he is malicious, ill-natured, and designing; and sticks at nothing to carry a point on which he has once set his heart. He has ruined, Sir John says, three young creatures already under vows of marriage.”

— Samuel Richardson

188. “Women are sometimes drawn in to believe against probability by the unwillingness they have to doubt their own merit.”

— Samuel Richardson

189. “There is but one pride pardonable; that of being above doing a base or dishonorable action.”

— Samuel Richardson

190. “Let a man do what he will by a single woman, the world is encouragingly apt to think Marriage a sufficient amends.”

— Samuel Richardson

191. “If she be a woman, and love me, I shall surely catch her once tripping: for love was ever a traitor to its harbourer: and Love within, and I without, she will be more than a woman, as the poet says, or I less than man, if I succeed not.”

— Samuel Richardson

192. “Why should the guiltless tremble so, when the guilty can possess their minds in peace?”

— Samuel Richardson

193. “Why should such an angel be plunged so low as into the vulgar offices of domestic life? Were she mine, I should hardly wish to see her a mother unless there were a kind of moral certainty that minds like hers could be propagated.”

— Samuel Richardson