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
Tis certain that Morality is an indispensable Requisite of true Religion, and there can be none without it. But it would become the Pride and Ignorance of Pagans only, to magnify it, as the Whole of what is necessary.
Twenty-four is a prudent age for women to marry at.
Parents cannot expect advice to have the same force upon their children as experience has upon themselves.
A good man will not engage even in a national cause, without examining the justice of it.
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.
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.
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.
All that hoops are good for is to clean dirty shoes and keep fellows at a distance.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Men know no medium: They will either, spaniel-like, fawn at your feet, or be ready to leap into your lap.
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.