Samuel Richardson
49 quotes
Biography
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.
"Married people should not be quick to hear what is said by either when in ill humor."
"From sixteen to twenty, all women, kept in humor by their hopes and by their attractions, appear to be good-natured."
"The companion of an evening, and the companion for life, require very different qualifications."
"Love will draw an elephant through a key-hole."
"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."
"Hope is the cordial that keeps life from stagnating."
"O! what a Godlike Power is that of doing Good! — I envy the Rich and the Great for nothing else!"
"My Master said, on another Occasion, that those who doubt most, always erred least."
"That dangerous but too commonly received notion, that a reformed rake makes the best husband."
"The person who will bear much shall have much to bear, all the world through."
"The pleasures of the mighty are obtained by the tears of the poor."
"I am forced, as I have often said, to try to make myself laugh, that I may not cry: for one or other I must do."
"Love gratified, is love satisfied — and love satisfied, is indifference begun."
"Nothing can be more wounding to a spirit not ungenerous, than a generous forgiveness."
"Vast is the field of Science … the more a man knows, the more he will find he has to know."
"The World, thinking itself affronted by superior merit, takes delight to bring it down to its own level."
"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."
"Those who have least to do are generally the most busy people in the world."
"A feeling heart is a blessing that no one, who has it, would be without; and it is a moral security of innocence; since the heart that is able to partake of the distress of another, cannot wilfully give it."
"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."
"Of what violences, murders, depredations, have not the epic poets, from all antiquity, been the occasion, by propagating false honour, false glory, and false religion?"
"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."
"Sir, there is more knowledge of the heart in one letter of Richardson's, than in all Tom Jones."
"When his story of Pamela first came out, some extracts got into the public papers, and used by that means to find their way down as far as Preston in Lancashire, where my aunt who told me the story then resided. One morning as she rose, the bells were set singing and the flag was observed to fly from the great steeple. She rang her bell and inquired the reason of these rejoicings, when her maid came in bursting with joy, and said, "Why, madam, poor Pamela's married at last; the news came down to us in this morning's paper.""
"The difference in the education of men and women must give the former great advantages over the latter, even where geniuses are equal."