Top 86 Quotes & Sayings by Richard Steele

A Woman is naturally more helpless than the other Sex; and a Man of Honour and Sense should have this in his View in all Manner of Commerce with her.

I cannot think of any character below the flatterer, except he who envies him.

That man never grows old who keeps a child in his heart.

The fool within himself is the object of pity, until he is flattered.

It is to be noted that when any part of this paper appears dull there is a design in it.

To be exempt from the Passions with which others are tormented, is the only pleasing Solitude.

It is an endless and frivolous Pursuit to act by any other Rule than the Care of satisfying our own Minds in what we do.

A little in drink, but at all times your faithful husband.

The married state, with and without the affection suitable to it, is the completest image of heaven and hell we are capable of receiving in this life.

Fire and swords are slow engines of destruction, compared to the tongue of a Gossip.

I look upon it as a Point of Morality, to be obliged by those who endeavour to oblige me.

There is no Pleasure like that of receiving Praise from the Praiseworthy.

Nothing can atone for the lack of modesty; without which beauty is ungraceful and wit detestable.

A woman seldom writes her mind but in her postscript.

Reading is to the mind what exercising is to the body.

One common calamity makes men extremely affect each other, though they differ in every other particular

It is a secret known but to few, yet of no small use in the conduct of life, that when you fall into a man's conversation, the first thing you should consider is, whether he has a greater inclination to hear you, or that you should hear him.

Whether a pretty woman grants or withholds her favors, she always likes to be asked for them.

Praise from an enemy is the most pleasing of all commendations.

When a man has no design but to speak plain truth, he may say a great deal in a very narrow compass.

People spend their lives in the service of their passions instead of employing their passions in the service of their lives.

You see, among men who are honored with the common appellation ogentleman, many contradictions to that character.

A Daughter: The companion, the friend, and the confidant of her mother, and the object of a pleasure something like the love between the angels to her father.

Violins are the lively, forward, importunate wits, that distinguish themselves by the flourishes of imagination, sharpness of repartee, glances of satire, and bear away the upper part in every consort.

Compassion does not only refine and civilize human nature, but has something in it more pleasing and agreeable, than what can be met with in such an indolent happiness, such an indifference to mankind, as that in which the stoics placed their wisdom. As love is the most delightful passion, pity is nothing else but love softened by a degree of sorrow: In short, it is a kind of pleasing anguish, anguish as well as generous sympathy, that knits mankind together, and blends them in the same common lot.

I cannot think of any character below the flatterer, except he who envies him

Whoever would be wise should read the Proverbs; whoever would be holy should read the Psalms.

A favor well bestowed is almost as great an honor to him who confers it as to him who receives it.

It is a very melancholy reflection that men are usually so weak that it is absolutely necessary for them to know sorrow and pain to be in their right senses.

Modesty never rages, never murmurs, never pouts; when it is ill-treated, it pines, it beseeches, it languishes.

Pride destroys all symmetry and grace, and affectation is a more terrible enemy to fine faces than the small-pox.

Simplicity of all things is the hardest to be copy.

Though very troublesome to others, anger is most so to him that has it.

A lie is troublesome, and sets a man's invention upon the rack, and one trick needs a great many more to make it good.

The person, whom you favored with a loan, if he be a good man, will think himself in your debt after he has paid you.

I know of no manner of speaking so offensive as that of giving praise, and closing it with an exception.

Among all the diseases of the mind there is not one more epidemical or more pernicious than the love of flattery.

Many take pleasure in spreading abroad the weakness of an exalted character.

Since we cannot promise our selves constant health, let us endeavour at such temper as may be our best support in the decay of it.

Pleasure, when it is a man's chief purpose, disappoints itself; and the constant application to it palls the faculty of enjoying it.

The world is grown so full of dissimulation and compliment, that men's words are hardly any signification of their thoughts.

It may be remarked in general, that the laugh of men of wit is for the most part but a feint, constrained kind of half-laugh, as such persons are never without some diffidence about them; but that of fools is the most honest, natural, open laugh in the world.

There can hardly, I believe, be imagined a more desirable pleasure than that of praise unmixed with any possibility of flattery.

It has been a sort of maxim, that the greatest art is to conceal art; but I know not how, among some people we meet with, their greatest cunning is to appear cunning.

It is a wonderful thing that so many, and they not reckoned absurd, shall entertain those with whom they converse by giving them the history of their pains and aches and imagine such narrations their quota of conversation.

I look upon it as a Point of Morality, to be obliged by those who endeavour to oblige me

A man advanced in years that thinks fit to look back on his former life, and calls that only life which was passed with satisfaction and enjoyment, excluding all parts which were not pleasant to him, will find himself very young, if not in infancy.

A man cannot have an idea of perfection in another, which he was never sensible of in himself.

Vanity makes people ridiculous, pride odious, and ambition terrible.

He that has sense knows that learning is not knowledge, but rather the art of using it.

There is no Pleasure like that of receiving Praise from the Praiseworthy

Zeal for the public good is the characteristic of a man of honor and a gentleman, and must take the place of pleasures, profits and all other private gratifications.

Of all the affections which attend human life, the love of glory is the most ardent.

That man never grows old who keeps a child in his heart

It is to beoted that when any part of this paper appears dull there is a design in it.

A woman seldom writes her mind but in her postscript

Though her mien carries much more invitation than command, to behold her is an immediate check to loose behaviour; to love her was a liberal education.

Readings is to the mind what exercice is to the body.

No woman is capable of being beautiful who is not incapable of being false.

Mutual good humor is a dress we ought to appear in wherever we meet, and we should make no mention of what concerns ourselves, without it be of matters wherein our friends ought to rejoice.