Samuel Richardson Quotes

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:

People of little understanding are most apt to be angry when their sense is called into question.

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.

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.

Be sure don't let people's telling you, you are pretty, puff you up; for you did not make yourself, and so can have no praise due to you for it. It is virtue and goodness only, that make the true beauty.

See, madam, my Lord is sullen; he won’t answer me. I must get you to ask my questions. I think it my duty to ask leave to go. My Lord may go where he pleases, without my leave — Very fit he should. He is a man. I once could have done so; high-ho! but I have vowed obedience and vassalage. I will not break my vow. Ask him, If I have his consent for a visit to Miss Byron, of a month or two? Ask him, madam, If he can make himself happy in my absence? I should otherwise be loth to go for so long a time.

Mr. Hickman, indeed, speaks very handsomely of Mr. Belford. But he, poor man! has not much penetration. — If he had, he would hardly think so well of me as he does.

Charming creature, thought I (but I charge thee, that thou let not any of the sex know my esultation) is it so soon come to this? Am I already lord of the destiny of a Clarissa Harlowe! Am I already the reformed man thou resolvedst I should be, before I had the least encouragement given me? Is it thus, that the more thou knowest me, the less thou seest reason to approve of me? _And can art and design enter into the breat so celestial; To banish me from thee, to insist so rigorously upon my absence, in order to bring me closer to thee, and make the blessing dear? _Well do thy arts justify mine; and encorage me to let loose my plotting genius upon thee.

I have just received my uncle’s Letter. And, after his charge upon me of Vanity and Pride, will my parade, as above, stand me in any stead? — I must trust to it. Only one word to my dear and everhonoured uncle — Don’t you, Sir, impute to me a belief of the truth of those extravagant compliments made by men professing Love to me; and I will not wish you to think me one bit the wiser, the handsomer, the better for them, than I was before.

We have all our faults. God knows what he will pardon, and what he will punish. His pardon, however, in a great measure depends upon yourself. You have health and time, to all appearance, before you: Your future life may be a life of penitence. I am no divine, madam; I would not be thought to preach to you: But you have now a prospect opened of future happiness, thro’ your mutual misunderstandings, that you never otherwise might have had. And let me make an observation to you; That where hate or dislike have once taken place of liking, the first separation, in such a case as this, is always the best. Affection or esteem between man and woman, once forfeited, hardly ever is recovered.

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!

I am not apt to run into grave declamations against the times:

do not easily dislike, Sir; but then I do not easily like. And I never will marry any man, to whom I cannot be more than indifferent.

There is a kind of magnetism in goodness. Bad people will indeed find out bad people, and confederate with them, in order to keep one another in countenance; but they are bound together by a rope of sand; while trust, confidence, love, sympathy, and a reciprocation of beneficent actions, twist a cord which ties good men to good men, and cannot be easily broken.

The pen is almost as pretty an implement in a woman's fingers, as a needle.