Samuel Richardson
Samuel Richardson
Samuel Richardsonwas an 18th-century English writer and printer. He is best known for his three epistolary novels: Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded, Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Ladyand The History of Sir Charles Grandison. Richardson was an established printer and publisher for most of his life and printed almost 500 different works, including journals and magazines. He was also known to collaborate closely with the London bookseller Andrew Millar on several occasions...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth19 August 1689
The World is not enough used to this way of writing, to the moment. It knows not that in the minutiae lie often the unfoldings ofthe Story, as well as of the heart; and judges of an action undecided, as if it were absolutely decided.
The Nature of Familiar Letters, written, as it were, to the Moment, while the Heart is agitated by Hopes and Fears, on Events undecided, must plead an Excuse for the Bulk of a Collection of this Kind. Mere Facts and Characters might be comprised in a much smaller Compass: But, would they be equally interesting?
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.
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.
Women love those best (whether men, women, or children) who give them most pain.
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.
Love is a blazing, crackling, green-wood flame, as much smoke as flame; friendship, married friendship particularly, is a steady,intense, comfortable fire. Love, in courtship, is friendship in hope; in matrimony, friendship upon proof.
He only who gave life has a power over it.
Rakes are more suspicious than honest men.
A departure from the truth was hardly ever known to be a single one.
She who is more ashamed of dishonesty than of poverty will not be easily overcome.
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.
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!
A good man will honor him who lives up to his religious profession, whatever it be.