Samuel Richardson Quotes

You are all too rich to be happy, child. For must not each of you be the constitutions of your family marry to be still richer? People who know in what their main excellence consists are not to be blamed (are they?) for cultivating and improving what they think most valuable? Is true happiness any part of your family-view?—So far from it, that none of your family but yourself could be happy were they not rich. So let them fret on, grumble and grudge, and accumulate; and wondering what ails them that they have not happiness when they have riches, think the cause is want of more; and so go on heaping up till Death, as greedy an accumulator as themselves, gathers them into his garner!

~ Samuel Richardson

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

~ Samuel Richardson

I will be a Friend to you, and you shall take care of my Linen

~ Samuel Richardson

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

~ Samuel Richardson

...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!

~ Samuel Richardson

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.

~ Samuel Richardson

Many a man has been ashamed of his wicked attempts, when he has been repulsed, that would never have been ashamed of them, had he succeeded.

~ Samuel Richardson

From sixteen to twenty, all women, kept in humor by their hopes and by their attractions, appear to be good-natured.

~ Samuel Richardson

Married people should not be quick to hear what is said by either when in ill humor.

~ Samuel Richardson

Love will draw an elephant through a key-hole.

~ Samuel Richardson

The plays and sports of children are as salutary to them as labor and work are to grown persons.

~ Samuel Richardson

As a child is indulged or checked in its early follies, a ground is generally laid for the happiness or misery of the future man.

~ Samuel Richardson

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.

~ Samuel Richardson

Women love to be called cruel, even when they are kindest.

~ Samuel Richardson

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

~ Samuel Richardson

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.

~ Samuel Richardson

Men will bear many things from a kept mistress, which they would not bear from a wife.

~ Samuel Richardson