Top 200 Quotes & Sayings by Samuel Richardson - Page 2

There is a pride, a self-love, in human minds that will seldom be kept so low as to make men and women humbler than they ought to be.

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.

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

Honeymoon lasts not nowadays above a fortnight.

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

It is much easier to find fault with others, than to be faultless ourselves.

We are all very ready to believe what we like.

Smatterers in learning are the most opinionated.

The little words in the Republic of Letters, like the little folks in a nation, are the most useful and significant.

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.

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

It may be very generous in one person to offer what it would be ungenerous in another to accept.

The plays and sports of children are as salutary to them as labor and work are to grown persons.

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.

The first reading of a Will, where a person dies worth anything considerable, generally affords a true test of the relations' love to the deceased.

The Cause of Women is generally the Cause of Virtue.

Quantity in diet is more to be regarded than quality. A full meal is a great enemy both to study and industry.

Women are so much in love with compliments that rather than want them, they will compliment one another, yet mean no more by it than the men do.

Tutors who make youth learned do not always make them virtuous.

The English, the plain English, of the politest address of a gentleman to a lady is, I am now, dear Madam, your humble servant: Pray be so good as to let me be your Lord and Master.

Humility is a grace that shines in a high condition but cannot, equally, in a low one because a person in the latter is already, perhaps, too much humbled.

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.

There is a good and a bad light in which every thing that befalls us may be taken. If the human mind will busy itself to make theworst of every disagreeable occurrence, it will never want woe.

What a world is this! What is there in it desirable? The good we hope for so strangely mixed, that one knows not what to wish for!And one half of mankind tormenting the other, and being tormented themselves in tormenting!

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

All women, from the countess to the cook-maid, are put into high good humor with themselves when a man is taken with them at firstsight. And be they ever so plain, they will find twenty good reasons to defend the judgment of such a man.

A man who flatters a woman hopes either to find her a fool or to make her one.

Friendship is the perfection of love, and superior to love; it is love purified, exalted, proved by experience and a consent of minds. Love, Madam, may, and love does, often stop short of friendship.

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

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

The readiness with which women are apt to forgive the men who have deceived other women; and that inconsiderate notion of too many of them that a reformed rake makes the best husband, are great encouragements to vile men to continue their profligacy.

The uselessness and expensiveness of modern women multiply bachelors.

The longer a woman remains single, the more apprehensive she will be of entering into the state of wedlock. At seventeen or eighteen, a girl will plunge into it, sometimes without either fear or wit; at twenty, she will begin to think; at twenty-four, will weigh and discriminate; at twenty-eight, will be afraid of venturing; at thirty, will turn about, and look down the hill she has ascended, and sometimes rejoice, sometimes repent, that she has gained that summit sola.

Parents cannot expect advice to have the same force upon their children as experience has upon themselves.

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

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

By my soul, I can neither eat, drink, nor sleep; nor, what's still worse, love any woman in the world but her.

Youth is rather to be pitied than envied by people in years since it is doomed to toil through the rugged road of life which the others have passed through, in search of happiness that is not to be met with in it and that, at the highest, can be compounded for only by the blessing of a contented mind.

Angry men make themselves beds of nettles.

We can all be good when we have no temptation or provocation to the contrary.

The unhappy never want enemies.

Platonic love is platonic nonsense.

The first vice of the first woman was curiosity, and it runs through the whole sex.

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

People hardly ever do anything in anger, of which they do not repent.

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

Those who doubt themselves most generally err least.

Over-niceness may be under-niceness.

The most innocent heart is generally the most credulous.

Women love those best (whether men, women, or children) who give them most pain.

The wife of a self-admirer must expect a very cold and negligent husband.

The wisest among us is a fool in some things.

Wicked words are the prelude to wicked deeds.

The coyest maids make the fondest wives.

For tutors, although they may make youth learned, do not always make them virtuous.

Men are less forgiving than women.

The woman who thinks meanly of herself is any man's purchase.

The first step in achieving prosperity and wealth is learning to appreciate what you already have.

Superstitious notions propagated in infancy are hardly ever totally eradicate, not even in minds grown strong enough to despise the like credulous folly in others.

It is a happy art to know when one has said enough. I would leave my hearers wishing me to say more rather than give them cause toshow, by their inattention, that I had said too much.