Samuel Richardson Quotes

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.

Why should the guiltless tremble so, when the guilty can possess their minds in peace?

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Доверчивостта е дете на добродушието.

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.

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.

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.

In the mean time, to Balls, Routes, Drums, and so-forth; and to qualify me for these latter,

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:

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.

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