Top 200 Quotes & Sayings by Samuel Richardson

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English writer Samuel Richardson.

Last updated on September 16, 2024.

Samuel Richardson was an English writer and printer known for three epistolary novels: Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740), Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady (1748) and The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753). He printed almost 500 works, including journals and magazines, working periodically with the London bookseller Andrew Millar. Richardson had been apprenticed to a printer, whose daughter he eventually married. He lost her along with five sons, but remarried and had four daughters, who reached adulthood, but no male heirs to continue the print shop. As it ran down, he wrote his first novel at the age of 51 and joined the admired writers of his day. Leading acquaintances included Samuel Johnson and Sarah Fielding, the physician and Behmenist George Cheyne, and the theologian and writer William Law, whose books he printed. At Law's request, Richardson printed some poems by John Byrom. In literature he rivalled Henry Fielding; the two responded to each other's literary styles.

English - Writer | August 19, 1689 - July 4, 1761

Source: Wikipedia

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

Samuel Richardson

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

Samuel Richardson

It is better to be thought perverse than insincere.

Samuel Richardson

Shame is a fitter and generally a more effectual punishment for a child than beating.

Samuel Richardson

The life of a good man is a continual warfare with his passions.

Samuel Richardson

A beautiful woman must expect to be more accountable for her steps, than one less attractive.

Samuel Richardson

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

Samuel Richardson

Sorrow makes an ugly face odious.

Samuel Richardson

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

Samuel Richardson

Parents sometimes make not those allowances for youth, which, when young, they wished to be made for themselves.

Samuel Richardson

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

Samuel Richardson

Necessity may well be called the mother of invention but calamity is the test of integrity.

Samuel Richardson

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

Samuel Richardson

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

Samuel Richardson

The pleasures of the mighty are obtained by the tears of the poor.

Samuel Richardson

To what a bad choice is many a worthy woman betrayed, by that false and inconsiderate notion, That a reformed rake makes the best husband!

Samuel Richardson

People who act like angels ought to have angels to deal with.

Samuel Richardson

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

Samuel Richardson

People of little understanding are most apt to be angry when their sense is called into question.

Samuel Richardson

Love gratified is love satisfied, and love satisfied is indifference begun.

Samuel Richardson

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

Samuel Richardson

Women are always most observed when they seem themselves least to observe, or to lay out for observation.

Samuel Richardson

Nothing dries sooner than tears.

Samuel Richardson

Love will draw an elephant through a key-hole.

Samuel Richardson

Hope is the cordial that keeps life from stagnating.

Samuel Richardson

The companion of an evening, and the companion for life, require very different qualifications.

Samuel Richardson

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

Samuel Richardson

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

Handsome husbands often make a wife's heart ache.

Samuel Richardson

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

Samuel Richardson

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

Samuel Richardson

A man may keep a woman, but not his estate.

Samuel Richardson

Love is not a volunteer thing.

Samuel Richardson

Women do not often fall in love with philosophers.

Samuel Richardson

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

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

Those we dislike can do nothing to please us.

Samuel Richardson

What likelihood is there of corrupting a man who has no ambition?

Samuel Richardson

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

Samuel Richardson

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

Samuel Richardson

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

Samuel Richardson

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

Samuel Richardson

A good man, though he will value his own countrymen, yet will think as highly of the worthy men of every nation under the sun.

Samuel Richardson

Calamity is the test of integrity.

Samuel Richardson

Marriage is the highest state of friendship. If happy, it lessens our cares by dividing them, at the same time that it doubles our pleasures by mutual participation.

Samuel Richardson

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

Women love to be called cruel, even when they are kindest.

Samuel Richardson

A widow's refusal of a lover is seldom so explicit as to exclude hope.

Samuel Richardson

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

Samuel Richardson

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

Samuel Richardson

Love before marriage is absolutely necessary.

Samuel Richardson

A husband's mother and his wife had generally better be visitors than inmates.

Samuel Richardson

Vast is the field of Science. The more a man knows, the more he will find he has to know.

Samuel Richardson

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

Samuel Richardson

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

Samuel Richardson

Where words are restrained, the eyes often talk a great deal.

Samuel Richardson

If the education and studies of children were suited to their inclinations and capacities, many would be made useful members of society that otherwise would make no figure in it.

Samuel Richardson

Those who will bear much, shall have much to bear.

Samuel Richardson

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

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

Samuel Richardson