Complete Works of Samuel Richardson Quotes

“Love-matches, my dear, are foolish things. I know not how you will find it some time hence: No general rule, however, without exceptions, you know. Violent Love on one side, is enough in conscience, if the other be not a fool, or ungrateful: The Lover and Lovée make generally the happiest couple. Mild, sedate convenience, is better than a stark staring-mad passion. The wall-climbers, the hedge and ditchleapers, the river-forders, the window-droppers, always find reason to think so. Who ever hears of darts, flames, Cupids, Venus’s, Adonis’s, and suchlike nonsense, in matrimony? — Passion is transitory; but discretion, which never bois over, gives durable  happiness.”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“What poor wretches are we, Harriet, men as well as women! We pray for long life; and what is the issue of our prayers, but leave to outlive our teeth and our friends, to stand in the way of our elbowing relations, and to change our swan-skins for skins of buff; which nevertheless will keep out neither cold nor infirmity?”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“I am not apt to run into grave declamations against the times:”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“That she thought me the prettiest creature she ever beheld. — Creature was her word — We are all creatures, ’tis true: But I think I never was more displeased with the sound of the word Creature, than I was from Lady Anne.”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“You say that if a woman resolves not to marry till she finds herself addressed to by a man of strict virtue, she must be for ever single. If this be true, what wicked creatures are men! What a dreadful abuse of passions, given them for the noblest purposes, are they guilty of!”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“I am not to know the contents of his Letter. The hearts of us women, when we are urged to give way to a clandestine and unequal address, or when inclined to favour such a one, are apt, and are pleaded with, to rise against the notions of bargain and sale. Smithfield bargains, you Londoners call them:”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“Mr. Lowther told me just now, that the fault of  the gentlemen who have now the care of him, has not been want of skill, but of critical courage, and a too great solicitude to oblige their patient; which, by their own account, had made them forego several opportunities which had offered to assist nature. In short, Sir, said he, your friend knows too much of his own case to be ruled, and too little to qualify him to direct what is to be done, especially as symptoms must have been frequently changing.”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“It was most gracefully done: But see, Lucy, the example of a good and generous man can sometimes alter natures; and covetous men, I have heard it observed, when their hearts are open’d, often act nobly.”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“They will very probably, by remembring past mistakes, avoid many inconveniencies into which forgetfulness will run you lively ones.”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“It is unworthy of a man of spirit to be sollicitous to keep himself within the boundaries of human laws, on no other motive than to avoid the temporal inconveniencies attending the breach of them. The laws were not made so much for the direction of good men, as to circumscribe the bad.”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“I honour a good, a generous, a brave, and humane soldier: But were such an one to be the bravest of men, how can his wife expect constant protection from the husband who is less his own, and consequently less hers, than almost any other man can be (a sailor excepted); and who must therefore, oftener, than any other man, leave her exposed to those insults, from which she seems to think he can best defend her? Lady L. (smiling) But may it not be said, Sir, that those women who make soldiers their choice, deserve in some degree, a rank with heroes; when they can part with their husbands for the sake of their country’s glory?”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“Well, I don’t care: This life is but a passage, a short passage, to a better: And let one jostle, and another elbow; another push me, because they know the weakest must give way; yet I will endeavour steadily to pursue my course, till I get thro’ it, and into broad and open day.”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“Were it but to avoid an interview with a father who seem’d to have been too much used to womens tears to be moved by them;”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“Even now that I have concluded this moving recapitulation, it seems as nothing; and the whole world, my dear is as a bit of dirt under my feet.”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“God direct you according to them, and comfort you! All my fear was (and that more particularly for some of the last past months) that I should have been the mournful survivor. In a very few moments all my sufferings will be over; and God give you, when you come to this unavoidable period of all human vanity, the same happy prospects that are now opening to me! O Sir, believe me, all worldly joys are now nothing; less than nothing:”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“From her instructions, I had an early notion, that it was much more noble to forgive an injury than to resent it: and to give a life than to take it.”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“I have often heard my grandfather observe, that men of truly great and brave spirits are most tender and merciful; and that, on the contrary, men of base and low minds are cruel, tyrannical, insolent, where-ever they have power.”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“He has travelled. But is not human nature the same in every country, allowing only for different customs? — Do not Love, hatred, anger, malice, all the passions in short, good or bad, shew themselves by like effects in the faces, hearts,  and actions of the people of every country?”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“It was “The devil of a Sex.” It was a cursed thing, he said, that a man could be neither happy with them, nor without them. Devil’s baits was another of his compliments to us. He hardly mentioned my name.”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“Indeed, my Marforio, there are very few topics that arise in conversation among men, upon which women ought to open their lips. Silence becomes them. Let them therefore hear, wonder, and improve, in silence. They are naturally contentious, and lovers of contradiction’ [Something like this Mr. Walden once threw out: And you know who, my Lucy, has said as much] ‘and shall we qualify them to be disputants against ourselves?”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“Sir John gave us such an account of Sir Hargrave, as helped me not only in the character I have given of him, but let me know that he is a very dangerous and enterprising man. He says, that laughing and light as he is in company, he is malicious, ill-natured, and designing; and sticks at nothing to carry a point on which he has once set his heart. He has ruined, Sir John says, three young creatures already under vows of marriage.”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“Where the world is inclined to favour, replied I, it is apt to over-rate, as much as it will under-rate where it disfavours.”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“In the mean time, to Balls, Routes, Drums, and so-forth; and to qualify me for these latter,”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“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!”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“What good creatures are we women!”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“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?”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“How dreadful, on the contrary, must be her case, who is the occasion of propagating dissention, irreconcilable hatred, and abhorrence between her own relations and those of the man to whom she for life engages herself!”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“How can palsied age, which is but a terrifying object to youth, expect the indulgence, the love, of the young and gay, if it does not study to promote those pleasures which itself was fond of in youth? Enjoy innocently your season, girls, once said she, setting half a score of us into country dances. I watch for the failure of my memory; and shall never give it over for quite lost, till I forget what were my own innocent wishes and delights in the days of my youth.”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“What he said gave us comfort. No wonder if we women love courage in a man: We ought, if it be true  courage, like that of your excellent brother. After all, my dear, I think we must allow a natural superiority in the minds of men over women. Do we not want protection? And does not that want imply inferiority? — Yet if there be two sorts of courage, an acquired and a natural; why may not the former be obtained by women, as well as by men, were they to have the same education? NATURAL courage, may belong to either.”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“My dearest Clementina, said I, you have shewn so glorious a magnanimity, that it would be injuring you, to suppose you are not equal to every branch of duty. God forbid that you should be called to sustain an unreasonable trial — In a reasonable one, you must be victorious.”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson