Every one, more or less, loves Power, yet those who most wish for it are seldom the fittest to be trusted with it.

About Samuel Richardson

Samuel Richardson was an English writer and printer known for three epistolary novels: Pamela; or, Virtue Rewardedand The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753). He printed almost 500 works, including journals and magazines, working periodically with the London bookseller Andrew Millar.

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More quotes from Samuel Richardson

Handsome husbands often make a wife’s heart ache.

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

Honeymoon lasts not nowadays above a fortnight.

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

Love will draw an elephant through a key-hole.

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

Calamity is the test of integrity.

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

Sorrow makes an ugly face odious.

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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.

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

Love before marriage is absolutely necessary.

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

Those we dislike can do nothing to please us.

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

Women do not often fall in love with philosophers.

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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.

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

We are all very ready to believe what we like.

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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.

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

Smatterers in learning are the most opinionated.

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

It is better to be thought perverse than insincere.

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

Love is not a volunteer thing.

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

Nothing dries sooner than tears.

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

The Cause of Women is generally the Cause of Virtue.

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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.

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

Hope is the cordial that keeps life from stagnating.

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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.

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)

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

Samuel Richardson

English writer and printer (1689-1761)