Richard Steele
It is to be noted that when any part of this paper appears dull there is a design in it.Collection: Design
Fire and swords are slow engines of destruction, compared to the tongue of a Gossip.
That man never grows old who keeps a child in his heart.
I cannot think of any character below the flatterer, except he who envies him.
Reading is to the mind what exercising is to the body.
I look upon it as a Point of Morality, to be obliged by those who endeavour to oblige me.
Nothing can atone for the lack of modesty; without which beauty is ungraceful and wit detestable.
A woman seldom writes her mind but in her postscript.
The fool within himself is the object of pity, until he is flattered.
A little in drink, but at all times your faithful husband.
It is an endless and frivolous Pursuit to act by any other Rule than the Care of satisfying our own Minds in what we do.
There is no Pleasure like that of receiving Praise from the Praiseworthy.
A Woman is naturally more helpless than the other Sex; and a Man of Honour and Sense should have this in his View in all Manner of Commerce with her.
The married state, with and without the affection suitable to it, is the completest image of heaven and hell we are capable of receiving in this life.
To be exempt from the Passions with which others are tormented, is the only pleasing Solitude.
Readings is to the mind what exercice is to the body.Collection: Reading
Among all the diseases of the mind there is not one more epidemical or more pernicious than the love of flattery.Collection: Mind
Vanity makes people ridiculous, pride odious, and ambition terrible.Collection: Ambition
People spend their lives in the service of their passions instead of employing their passions in the service of their lives.Collection: Inspirational Life
He that has sense knows that learning is not knowledge, but rather the art of using it.Collection: Art
There is no Pleasure like that of receiving Praise from the PraiseworthyCollection: Receiving
Simplicity of all things is the hardest to be copy.Collection: Simplicity
Whoever would be wise should read the Proverbs; whoever would be holy should read the Psalms.Collection: Wise
I know of no manner of speaking so offensive as that of giving praise, and closing it with an exception.Collection: Giving
The person, whom you favored with a loan, if he be a good man, will think himself in your debt after he has paid you.Collection: Men
A lie is troublesome, and sets a man's invention upon the rack, and one trick needs a great many more to make it good.Collection: Lying
Whether a pretty woman grants or withholds her favors, she always likes to be asked for them.Collection: Pretty Woman
A Daughter: The companion, the friend, and the confidant of her mother, and the object of a pleasure something like the love between the angels to her father.Collection: Girl
No woman is capable of being beautiful who is not incapable of being false.Collection: Beauty
It is a very melancholy reflection that men are usually so weak that it is absolutely necessary for them to know sorrow and pain to be in their right senses.Collection: Pain
Pleasure, when it is a man's chief purpose, disappoints itself; and the constant application to it palls the faculty of enjoying it.Collection: Men
That man never grows old who keeps a child in his heartCollection: Inspirational
Since we cannot promise our selves constant health, let us endeavour at such temper as may be our best support in the decay of it.Collection: Health
The world is grown so full of dissimulation and compliment, that men's words are hardly any signification of their thoughts.Collection: Men
It is a secret known but to few, yet of no small use in the conduct of life, that when you fall into a man's conversation, the first thing you should consider is, whether he has a greater inclination to hear you, or that you should hear him.Collection: Fall
Mutual good humor is a dress we ought to appear in wherever we meet, and we should make no mention of what concerns ourselves, without it be of matters wherein our friends ought to rejoice.Collection: Friendship
When a man has no design but to speak plain truth, he may say a great deal in a very narrow compass.Collection: Inspirational
It is a wonderful thing that so many, and they not reckoned absurd, shall entertain those with whom they converse by giving them the history of their pains and aches and imagine such narrations their quota of conversation.Collection: Pain
There is hardly that person to be found who is not more concerned for the reputation of wit and sense, than honesty and virtue.Collection: Honesty
Will. Honeycomb calls these over-offended ladies the outrageously virtuous.Collection: Virtue
It may be remarked in general, that the laugh of men of wit is for the most part but a feint, constrained kind of half-laugh, as such persons are never without some diffidence about them; but that of fools is the most honest, natural, open laugh in the world.Collection: Laughter
Praise from an enemy is the most pleasing of all commendations.Collection: Enemy
Though her mien carries much more invitation than command, to behold her is an immediate check to loose behaviour; to love her was a liberal education.Collection: Love
A man advanced in years that thinks fit to look back on his former life, and calls that only life which was passed with satisfaction and enjoyment, excluding all parts which were not pleasant to him, will find himself very young, if not in infancy.Collection: Men
It has been a sort of maxim, that the greatest art is to conceal art; but I know not how, among some people we meet with, their greatest cunning is to appear cunning.Collection: Art
Zeal for the public good is the characteristic of a man of honor and a gentleman, and must take the place of pleasures, profits and all other private gratifications.Collection: Men
Pride destroys all symmetry and grace, and affectation is a more terrible enemy to fine faces than the small-pox.Collection: Pride
Compassion does not only refine and civilize human nature, but has something in it more pleasing and agreeable, than what can be met with in such an indolent happiness, such an indifference to mankind, as that in which the stoics placed their wisdom. As love is the most delightful passion, pity is nothing else but love softened by a degree of sorrow: In short, it is a kind of pleasing anguish, anguish as well as generous sympathy, that knits mankind together, and blends them in the same common lot.Collection: Passion
Age in a virtuous person, of either sex, carries in it an authority which makes it preferable to all the pleasures of youth.Collection: Sex
A woman seldom writes her mind but in her postscriptCollection: Writing