Samuel Richardson
The eye is the casement at which the heart generally looks out. Many a woman who will not show herself at the door, has tipt the sly, the intelligible wink from the window.Collection: Women
Men and women are brothers and sisters; they are not of different species; and what need be obtained to know both, but to allow for different modes of education, for situation and constitution, or perhaps I should rather say, for habits, whether good or bad.Collection: Brother
Twenty-four is a prudent age for women to marry at.Collection: Marriage
Beauty is an accidental and transient good.Collection: Beauty
The person who is worthiest to live, is fittest to die.Collection: Persons
The life of a good man was a continual warfare with his passions.Collection: Passion
There is a good and a bad light in which every thing that befalls us may be taken. If the human mind will busy itself to make theworst of every disagreeable occurrence, it will never want woe.Collection: Taken
There cannot be any great happiness in the married life except each in turn give up his or her own humors and lesser inclinations.Collection: Giving Up
Every thing is pretty that is young.Collection: Youth
What the unpenetrating world call Humanity, is often no more than a weak mind pitying itself.Collection: Self
People hardly ever do anything in anger, of which they do not repent.Collection: Anger
All women, from the countess to the cook-maid, are put into high good humor with themselves when a man is taken with them at firstsight. And be they ever so plain, they will find twenty good reasons to defend the judgment of such a man.Collection: Women
Tho' Beauty is generally the creature of fancy, yet are there some who will be Beauties in every eye.Collection: Beauty
An acquaintance with the muses, in the education of youth, contributes not a little to soften manners. It gives a delicate turn to the imagination and a polish to the mind.Collection: Education
She who is more ashamed of dishonesty than of poverty will not be easily overcome.Collection: Overcoming
An honest heart is not to be trusted with itself in bad company.Collection: Heart
Over-niceness may be under-niceness.Collection: May
For tutors, although they may make youth learned, do not always make them virtuous.Collection: Youth
We have nothing to do, but to choose what is right, to be steady in the pursuit of it, and leave the issue to Providence.Collection: Issues
Virtue only is the true beauty.Collection: True Beauty
A departure from the truth was hardly ever known to be a single one.Collection: Truth
In all Works of This, and of the Dramatic Kind, STORY, or AMUSEMENT, should be considered as little more than the Vehicle to the more necessary INSTRUCTION.Collection: Stories
Nothing can be more wounding to a spirit not ungenerous, than a generous forgiveness.Collection: Spirit
Of what violences, murders, depredations, have not the epic poets, from all antiquity, been the occasion, by propagating false honor, false glory, and false religion?Collection: Epic
A feeling heart is a blessing that no one, who has it, would be without; and it is a moral security of innocence; since the heart that is able to partake of the distress of another, cannot wilfully give it.Collection: Heart
Rakes are more suspicious than honest men.Collection: Men
Evil courses can yield pleasure no longer than while thought and reflection can be kept off.Collection: Reflection
The richest princes and the poorest beggars are to have one great and just judge at the last day who will not distinguish betweenthem according to their ranks when in life but according to the neglected opportunities afforded to each. How much greater then, as the opportunities were greater, must be the condemnation of the one than of the other?Collection: Opportunity
All human excellence is but comparative — there are persons who excel us, as much as we fancy we excel the meanest.Collection: Excellence
All that hoops are good for is to clean dirty shoes and keep fellows at a distance.Collection: Distance
If women would make themselves appear as elegant to an Husband, as they were desirous to appear to him while a Lover, the Rake, which all women love, would last longer in the Husband than it generally does.Collection: Marriage
A good man will not engage even in a national cause, without examining the justice of it.Collection: Men
When we reflect upon the cruelties daily practised upon such of the animal creation as are given us for food, or which we ensnarefor our diversion, we shall be obliged to own that there is more of the savage in human nature than we are aware of.Collection: Animal
All angry persons are to be treated, by the prudent, as children.Collection: Children
Superstitious notions propagated in infancy are hardly ever totally eradicate, not even in minds grown strong enough to despise the like credulous folly in others.Collection: Strong
Platonic love is platonic nonsense.Collection: Love
Parents cannot expect advice to have the same force upon their children as experience has upon themselves.Collection: Children
The unhappy never want enemies.Collection: Adversity
The longer a woman remains single, the more apprehensive she will be of entering into the state of wedlock. At seventeen or eighteen, a girl will plunge into it, sometimes without either fear or wit; at twenty, she will begin to think; at twenty-four, will weigh and discriminate; at twenty-eight, will be afraid of venturing; at thirty, will turn about, and look down the hill she has ascended, and sometimes rejoice, sometimes repent, that she has gained that summit sola.Collection: Marriage
The grace that makes every grace amiable is humility.Collection: Humility
It is a happy art to know when one has said enough. I would leave my hearers wishing me to say more rather than give them cause toshow, by their inattention, that I had said too much.Collection: Art
Marriage is a state that is attended with so much care and trouble, that it is a kind of faulty indulgence and selfishness to livesingle, in order to avoid the difficulties it is attended with.Collection: Marriage
Spiritual pride is the most dangerous and the most arrogant of all sorts of pride.Collection: Spiritual
Why Do We Procrastinate? P - postponing life R - resisting change O - overly cautious C - contemplating course of action R - reasoning and justifying A - afraid of success S - summoning up some courage T - trouble moving forward I - inability to see the outcome N - not able to trust in your abilities to make decisions A - attempting to control the situation T - time to reflect on your motives E - erodes progressCollection: Moving
Distresses, however heavy at the time, appear light, and even joyous, to the reflecting mind, when worthily overcome.Collection: Light
What pity that Religion and Love, which heighten our relish for the things of both worlds, should ever run the human heart into enthusiasm, superstition, or uncharitableness!Collection: Running
A man who insults the modesty of a woman, as good as tells her that he has seen something in her conduct that warranted his presumption.Collection: Men
He only who gave life has a power over it.Collection: Suicide
Women are sometimes drawn in to believe against probability by the unwillingness they have to doubt their own merit.Collection: Believe