A biography for Samuel Richardsonhasn’t been written yet.
“A beautiful woman must expect to be more accountable for her steps, than one less attractive.”
“It is better to be thought perverse than insincere.”
“Shame is a fitter and generally a more effectual punishment for a child than beating.”
“Nothing in human nature is so God-like as the disposition to do good to our fellow-creatures.”
“To be a clergyman, and all that is compassionate and virtuous, ought to be the same thing.”
“Those we dislike can do nothing to please us.”
“There is but one pride pardonable; that of being above doing a base or dishonorable action.”
“What likelihood is there of corrupting a man who has no ambition?”
“From sixteen to twenty, all women, kept in humor by their hopes and by their attractions, appear to be good-natured.”
“Vast is the field of Science. The more a man knows, the more he will find he has to know.”
“Some children act as if they thought their parents had nothing to do, but to see them established in the world and then quit it.”
“Women are always most observed when they seem themselves least to observe, or to lay out for observation.”
“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.”
“It is much easier to find fault with others, than to be faultless ourselves.”
“Married people should not be quick to hear what is said by either when in ill humor.”
“Every one, more or less, loves Power, yet those who most wish for it are seldom the fittest to be trusted with it.”
“A Stander-by is often a better judge of the game than those that play.”
“Necessity may well be called the mother of invention but calamity is the test of integrity.”
“Love is not a volunteer thing.”
“We are all very ready to believe what we like.”