Samuel Richardson Quotes

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

  Samuel Richardson

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• “Tired of myself longing for what I have not”

  Samuel Richardson

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• “Be sure don't let people's telling you, you are pretty, puff you up; for you did not make yourself, and so can have no praise due to you for it. It is virtue and goodness only, that make the true beauty.”

  Samuel Richardson

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• “People of little understanding are most apt to be angry when their sense is called into question.”

  Samuel Richardson

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• “By my soul, I can neither eat, drink, nor sleep; nor, what's still worse, love any woman in the world but her.”

  Samuel Richardson

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• “I will be a Friend to you, and you shall take care of my Linen”

  Samuel Richardson

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• “O how can wicked men seem so steady and untouched with such black hearts, while poor innocents stand like malefactors before them!”

  Samuel Richardson

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• “You know not the value of the heart you have insulted... You, sir, I thank you, have lowered my fortunes: but, I bless God, that my mind is not sunk with my fortunes. It is, on the contrary, raised above fortune, and above you[.]”

  Samuel Richardson

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• “Familiarity destroys reverence.”

  Samuel Richardson

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• “My heart and my hand shall never be separated.”

  Samuel Richardson

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• “...for my master, bad as I have thought him, is not half so bad as this woman.--To be sure she must be an atheist!”

  Samuel Richardson

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• “For love must be a very foolish thing to look back upon, when it has brought persons born to affluence into indigence, and laid a generous mind under obligation and dependence.”

  Samuel Richardson

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• “The person who will bear much shall have much to bear, all the world through.”

  Samuel Richardson

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• “I will bear any thing you can inflict upon me with Patience, even to the laying down of my Life, to shew my Obedience to you in other Cases; but I cannot be patient, I cannot be passive, when my Virtue is at Stake!”

  Samuel Richardson

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• “Well, my story, surely, would furnish out a surprising kind of novel, if it were to be well told.”

  Samuel Richardson

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• “Love gratified is love satisfied,
  and love satisfied is indifference begun”

  Samuel Richardson

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• “Marriage is the highest state of friendship. If happy, it lessens our cares by dividing them, at the same time that it doubles our pleasures by mutual participation.”

  Samuel Richardson

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• “But these great minds cannot avoid doing extraordinary things!”

  Samuel Richardson

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• “This, I suppose, makes me such a sauce-box, and bold-face, and a creature, and all because I won't be a sauce-box and bold-face indeed.”

  Samuel Richardson

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• “to be courted as princesses for a few weeks, in order to be treated as slaves for the rest of our lives.”

  Samuel Richardson

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• “I hope, as he assures me, he was not guilty of Indecency; but have Reason to bless God, who, by disabling me in my Faculties, enabled me to preserve my Innocence; and when all my Strength would have signified nothing, magnified himself in my Weakness.”

  Samuel Richardson

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• “Is it not strange, that Love borders so much upon Hate? But this wicked Love is not like the true virtuous Love, to be sure: That and Hatred must be as far off, as Light and Darkness. And how must this Hate have been increased, if he had met with a base Compliance, after his wicked Will had been gratify'd?”

  Samuel Richardson

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• “Well, but, Mrs. Jervis, said I, let me ask you, if he can stoop to like such a poor girl as me, as perhaps he may, (for I have read of things almost as strange, from great men to poor damsels,) What can it be for?—He may condescend, perhaps, to think I may be good enough for his harlot; and those things don't disgrace men that ruin poor women, as the world goes.”

  Samuel Richardson

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• “What the deuse do we men go to school for? If our wits were equal to women's, we might spare much time and pains in our education: for nature teaches your sex, what, in a long course of labour and study, ours can hardly attain to.”

  Samuel Richardson

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• “Upon my word, I most heartily despise that sex! I wish they would let our fathers and mothers alone; teasing them to tease us with their golden promises, and protestations, and settlements, and the rest of their ostentatious nonsense. How charmingly might you and I live together and despite them all!- But to be cajoled, wire-drawn, and ensnared, like silly birds, into a state of bondage or vile subordination: to be courted as princesses for a few weeks, in order to be treated as slaves for the rest of our lives”

  Samuel Richardson

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