Quotes from Samuel Richardson

A promise is an obligation. A just man will keep his promise, a generous man will go beyond it. — This is my rule.

let me read over again that fearful letter of yours, that I may get it by heart, and with it feed my distress, and make calamity familiar to me.

And, bowing low, he withdrew with precipitation, as if he would not let me see his emotion. He left me looking here, looking there, as if for my heart; and then, as giving it up for irrecoverable, I became for a few moments motionless, and a statue.

How true is the observation that unrequited love turns to deepest hate.

Is not friendship the basis of my Love?

He was determined never to marry a widow. If he did, it should be one, who had a vast fortune, and who never had a child. And he had still a more particular exception; and that was to a woman who had red hair. He held these exceptions till he was forty; and then being looked upon as a determin'd bachelor, no family thought it worth their while to make proposals  to him:

What good creatures are we women!

O my Lucy! One branch of my vanity is intirely lopt off. I must pretend to some sort of skill in physiognomy! Never more will I, for this fellow's sake, presume to depend on my judgment of peoples hearts framed from their countenances.

First published in February 1753, Richardson's last epistolary novel was a response to Henry Fielding's The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, which in turn had parodied the morals presented in Richardson's previous novels.

La sciagurata ha troppi difetti di suo per tollerarne di simili in chiunque altro.

Just as poor Mr Wyerley, and others we both know, profane and ridicule Scripture; and all to evidence their pretensions to the same pernicious talent, and to have it thought that they are too wise to be good.

The first collection which he published, intituled PAMELA, exhibited the beauty and superiority of virtue in an innocent and unpolished mind, with the reward which often, even in this life, a protecting Providence bestows on goodness. A young woman of low degree, relating to her honest parents the severe trials she met with from a master who ought to have been the protector, not the assailer of her honour, shews the character of a libertine in its truly contemptible light.

Sir Charles has made a man of him, once more. His dress is as gay as ever; and, I dare say, he struts as much in it as ever, in company that knows not how he came by it. He reformed! — Bad habits are of the Jerusalem artichoke-kind; once planted, there is no getting them out of the ground.

From what has been premised, it may be supposed, that the present collection is not published ultimately, nor even principally, any more than the other two, for the sake of entertainment only. A much nobler end is in view.

No man, Mr. Reeves, would be more ready than myself to ask pardon, even of my inferior, had I done a wrong thing: But never should a prince make me stoop to disavow a right one.

O the unparalleled wickedness, stratagems, and devices, of those who call themselves gentlemen, yet pervert the design of Providence, in giving them ample means to do good, to their own everlasting perdition, and the ruin of poor oppressed innocence!

to discover day in an artful woman's heart. Nothing can be weaker, in the eye of an observer, who himself disdains artifice, than a woman who makes artifice her study. In such a departure from honest nature, there will be such curvings, that the eyes, the countenance, must ever betray the heart; while the lips, either breaking out into apologies, or aiming at reserve, confirm the suspicion, that all is not right in the mind.

Is there any-thing that you particularly like in the situation of that house? Houses, Sir, nay, Countries, will be alike to me, in the company of those I value.

No-body, it seems, thinks of an husband for Miss Barnevelt. She is sneeringly spoken of rather as a young fellow, than as a woman; and who will one day look out for a wife for herself. One reason indeed, she every-where gives, for being satisfied with being a woman; which is, that she cannot be married to a WOMAN.

Well as you love her, I suppose the return of her Love for yours, which you seem not to doubt, will not be enough. Can the poor girl be a Countess without a confounded parcel of dross fasten'd to her petticoat, to make her weight in the other scale?

Mr. Somner is a young gentleman lately married; very affected, and very opinionated. I told Mrs. Reeves, after he was gone, that I believed he was a dear Lover of his person; and she owned he was.  Yet had he no great reason for it.

Poor and rich, wise and unwise, we are all links of the same great chain.

Mr. Singleton smiled, and look'd as if delighted with all he saw and heard. Once, indeed, he try'd to speak: His mouth actually open'd, to give passage to his words; as sometimes seems to be his way before the words are quite ready: But he sat down satisfied with the effort.

If I regard my intention, gratitude, for a life preserved by you, and for a sense of my social duties (soul as well as body indebted to you, tho' a Protestant yourself) will not suffer it. Is there then nobody whom we can blame for the calamity befallen us? — How strangely is that calamity circumstanced! But is there so irreconcileable a difference between the two religious?