Quotes from Samuel Richardson

O how can wicked men seem so steady and untouched with such black hearts, while poor innocents stand like malefactors before them!

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.

for my master, bad as I have thought him, is not half so bad as this woman.--To be sure she must be an atheist!

The person who will bear much shall have much to bear, all the world through.

For love must be a very foolish thing to look back upon, when it has brought persons born to affluence into indigence, and laid a generous mind under obligation and dependence.

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

I will bear any thing you can inflict upon me with Patience, even to the laying down of my Life, to shew my Obedience to you in other Cases; but I cannot be patient, I cannot be passive, when my Virtue is at Stake!

This, I suppose, makes me such a sauce-box, and bold-face, and a creature, and all because I won't be a sauce-box and bold-face indeed.

And what after all, is death?? 'Tis but a cessation from mortal life; 'tis but the finishing of an appointed course; the refreshing inn after a fatiguing journey; the end of a life of cares and troubles; and, if happy, the beginning of a life of immortal happiness.

But these great minds cannot avoid doing extraordinary things!

Have I nothing new, nothing diverting, in my whimsical way, thou askest in one of thy letters to entertain thee with? and thou tellest me that, when I have least to narrate, to speak in the scottish phrase, I am most diverting, a pretty compliment either to thyself , or to me, to both indeed! a sign that thou hast as frothy a heart as I a head !

Well, my story, surely, would furnish out a surprising kind of novel, if it were to be well told.

to be courted as princesses for a few weeks, in order to be treated as slaves for the rest of our lives.

I hope, as he assures me, he was not guilty of Indecency; but have Reason to bless God, who, by disabling me in my Faculties, enabled me to preserve my Innocence; and when all my Strength would have signified nothing, magnified himself in my Weakness.

Is it not strange, that Love borders so much upon Hate? But this wicked Love is not like the true virtuous Love, to be sure: That and Hatred must be as far off, as Light and Darkness. And how must this Hate have been increased, if he had met with a base Compliance, after his wicked Will had been gratify'd?

Well, but, Mrs. Jervis, said I, let me ask you, if he can stoop to like such a poor girl as me, as perhaps he may, (for I have read of things almost as strange, from great men to poor damsels,) What can it be for?—He may condescend, perhaps, to think I may be good enough for his harlot; and those things don't disgrace men that ruin poor women, as the world goes.

What the deuse do we men go to school for? If our wits were equal to women's, we might spare much time and pains in our education: for nature teaches your sex, what, in a long course of labour and study, ours can hardly attain to.

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

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

'Passion' a word which involves so many feelings. I feel it when we touch; I feel it when we kiss; I feel it when I look at you. For you are my passion; my one true love.

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.

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.

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.

Love before marriage is absolutely necessary.