241 Quotes by Samuel Richardson

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.

Friendly satire may be compared to a fine lancet, which gently breathes a vein for health’s sake.

It is unworthy of a man of spirit to be sollicitous to keep himself within the boundaries of human laws, on no other motive than to avoid the temporal inconveniencies attending the breach of them. The laws were not made so much for the direction of good men, as to circumscribe the bad.

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

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!

Be sure don’t let people’s telling you, you are pretty, puff you up; for you did not make yourself, and so can have no praise due to you for it. It is virtue and goodness only, that make the true beauty.

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

From her instructions, I had an early notion, that it was much more noble to forgive an injury than to resent it: and to give a life than to take it.

Handsome husbands often make a wife’s heart ache.