Quotes from Samuel Richardson

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

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

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

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

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

It is better to be thought perverse than insincere.

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

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

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

A man who insults the modesty of a woman, as good as tells her that he has seen something in her conduct that warranted his presumption.

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

Rakes are more suspicious than honest men.

Men know no medium: They will either, spaniel-like, fawn at your feet, or be ready to leap into your lap.

Good men must be affectionate men.

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

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

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

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

A good man will not engage even in a national cause, without examining the justice of it.

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

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

Honesty is good sense, politeness, amiableness,--all in one.

Those we dislike can do nothing to please us.

Of what violences, murders, depredations, have not the epic poets, from all antiquity, been the occasion, by propagating false honor, false glory, and false religion?