Richardson Quotes

Wicked words are the prelude to wicked deeds.

Women are always most observed when they seem themselves least to observe, or to lay out for observation.

The woman who thinks meanly of herself is any man's purchase.

Men are less forgiving than women.

Reverence to a woman in courtship is less to be dispensed with, as, generally, there is but little of it shown afterwards.

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!

Distresses, however heavy at the time, appear light, and even joyous, to the reflecting mind, when worthily overcome.

Those who doubt themselves most generally err least.

We can all be good when we have no temptation or provocation to the contrary.

Whenever we approve, we can find a hundred good reasons to justify our approbation. Whenever we dislike, we can find a thousand to justify our dislike.

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.

The Cause of Women is generally the Cause of Virtue.

Over-niceness may be under-niceness.

The most innocent heart is generally the most credulous.

He only who gave life has a power over it.

Marry first, and love will come after is a shocking assertion; since a thousand things may happen to make the state but barely tolerable, when it is entered into with mutual affection.

There is but one pride pardonable; that of being above doing a base or dishonorable action.

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.

The seeds of Death are sown in us when we begin to live, and grow up till, like rampant weeds, they choak the tender flower of life.

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.

Twenty-four is a prudent age for women to marry at.

Those commands of superiors which are contrary to our first duties are not to be obeyed.

Every thing is pretty that is young.

I know not my own heart if it be not absolutely free.

The life of a good man was a continual warfare with his passions.

There are men who think themselves too wise to be religious.

Romances in general are calculated rather to fire the imagination, than to inform the judgment.

There hardly can be a greater difference between any two men, than there too often is, between the same man, a lover and a husband.

That cruelty which children are permitted to show to birds and other animals will most probably exert itself on their fellow creatures when at years of maturity.

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.

A fop takes great pains to hang out a sign, by his dress, of what he has within.

We all know by theory that there is no permanent happiness in this life: But the weight of the precept is not felt in the same manner as when it is confirmed to us by a heavy calamity.

Virtue only is the true beauty.

Things we wish to be true are apt to gain too ready credit with us.

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.

Too liberal self-accusations are generally but so many traps for acquittal with applause.

Would Alexander, madman as he was, have been so much a madman, had it not been for Homer?

There would be no supporting life were we to feel quite as poignantly for others as we do for ourselves.

Old men, imagining themselves under obligation to young paramours, seldom keep any thing from their knowledge.

A Stander-by is often a better judge of the game than those that play.

All that hoops are good for is to clean dirty shoes and keep fellows at a distance.

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.

A departure from the truth was hardly ever known to be a single one.

A good man will not engage even in a national cause, without examining the justice of it.

Tho' Beauty is generally the creature of fancy, yet are there some who will be Beauties in every eye.

Every scholar, I presume, is not, necessarily, a man of sense.

There is a pride, a self-love, in human minds that will seldom be kept so low as to make men and women humbler than they ought to be.

Let a man do what he will by a single woman, the world is encouragingly apt to think Marriage a sufficient amends.

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.

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?