Quotes from Samuel Richardson

Love is not a volunteer thing.

More joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety-and-nine just persons, who need it not.

Lady Olivia enquired after the distance of North hamptonshire. She will make the tour of England, she says, and visit me there. I was obliged to say I should take her visit as an honour. Wicked Politeness! Of how many falshoods dost thou make the people, who are called polite, guilty!

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.

He affected to say some things, that, tho' trite, were sententious, and carried with them the air of observation. There is some degree of merit in having such a memory, as will help a person to repeat and apply other mens wit with some tolerable propriety. But when he attempted to walk alone, he said things that it was impossible a man of common sense could say.

Il filosofo che contemplava il teschio di un re e quello di un povero, non vi ravvisò differenza.

Have I not taught you, that marriage is a duty, whenever it can be enter'd into with prudence? What a mean, what a selfish mind must that person have, whether man or woman, who can resolve against entering into the state, because it has its cares, its fatigues, its inconveniencies!

My Mother was an excellent woman: She had instilled into my earliest youth, almost from infancy, notions of moral rectitude, and the first principles of Christianity; now rather ridiculed than inculcated in our youth of condition.

Odd characters, my dear, are needful to make even characters shine. You good girls would not be valued as you are, if there were not bad ones.

Women must not encourage Fops and Fools. They must encourage Men of Sense only. And it is well said. But what will they do, if their lot be cast only among Foplings? If the Men of Sense do not offer themselves? And pray, may I not ask, if the taste of the age, among the men, is not Dress, Equipage, and Foppery? Is the cultivation of the mind any part of their study? The men, in short, are sunk, my dear; and the women but barely swim.

But a caution, Harriet! — Never, never, let foolish dreams claim a moment of your attention — Imminent as seemed the danger, your superstition made more dreadful to you than otherwise it would have been. You have a mind superior to such foibles: Act up to its native dignity, and let not the follies of your nurses, in your infantile state, be carried into your maturer age, to depreciate your womanly reason. Do you think I don't dream, as well as you?

Which was, that as soon as Miss Emily was marriageable, she would endeavour, either by fair means, or foul, to get her into her hands: And if she did, but for one week, she should the next come out the wife of a man she had in view, who would think half the fortune more than sufficient for himself, and make over the other half to her; and then she should come into her right, which she deems to be half of the fortune of which her husband died possessed.

I have lived to a great age: Yet to look backward to the time of my youth, when I was not a stranger to the hopes and fears that now agitate you, what a short space does it seem to be!

They say the Church-yard is crouded with more of the living, than of the dead, and there is hardly room  for a spade. What an image, on such a day!

The vanity of the Sex, said he, will not suffer any thing of this sort to escape our Harriet. Women, continued he, make themselves so cheap at the public places, in and about town, that new faces are more enquired after than even fine faces constantly seen. Harriet has an honest artless bloom in her cheeks; she may attract notice as a novice:

Travelling! Young men travelling! I cannot, my dear, but think it a very nonsensical thing! What can they see, but the ruins of the gay, once busy world, of which they have read? To see a parcel of giddy boys, under the direction of tutors, or governors, hunting after — What? — Nothing; or at best but ruins of ruins; for the imagination, aided by reflection, must be lest, after all, to make out the greater glories which the grave-digger Time has buried too deep for discovery.

It is true, my Lucy, that we young women are too apt to be pleased with the admiration pretended for us by the other Sex. But I have always endeavour'd to keep down any foolish pride of this sort, by such considerations as these: That flattery is the vice of men: That they seek to raise us, in order to lower us, and in the end to exalt themselves on the ruins of the pride they either hope to find or inspire:

Her three brothers preferred her interests to their own. Her father used to call her, The pride of his life; her mother, Her other self; her own Clementina. [CLEMENTINA! — Ah! Lucy, what a pretty name is Clementina!]

The asides, as you call them, and the soliloquies, in a play, however frequent, are very poor (because unnatural) shifts of bungling authors, to make their performances intelligible to the audience.

Such a kittenish disposition in her, I called it; for it is not so much the love of power that predominates in her mind, as the love of playfulness: And when the fit is upon her, she regards not whether it is a China cup, or a cork, that she pats and tosses about: But her sport will certainly be the death of Lord G's happiness.

As for mothers, many of them are for escorting their daughters to public places, because they themselves like racketing.

Truth is truth, my dear!

God send me a friend, that may tell me of my faults: if not, an enemy, and he will.

TRUE GENEROSITY is greatness of soul. It incites us to do more by a fellow-creature than can be strictly required of us. It obliges us to hasten to the relief of an object that wants relief; anticipating even such a one's hope or expectation.