Samuel Richardson Quotes

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

Tired of myself longing for what I have not

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.

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

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

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

Familiarity destroys reverence.

My heart and my hand shall never be separated.

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

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[.]

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.

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

...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!

Love gratified is love satisfied, and love satisfied is indifference begun

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.

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!

Dr. Samuel Johnson, who admired the novel with absolute conviction, famously remarked to Boswell, “Why, sir, if you were to read Richardson for the story…you would hang yourself….You must read him for the sentiment.

But these great minds cannot avoid doing extraordinary things!

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

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.

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

A revolution which can transform modes of production but not types of speech, social relations but not styles of architecture, remains radically incomplete.

Whom we fear more than love, we are not far from hating.

The tenderest and most generous minds, when harshly treated, become generally the most inflexible.

And what after all, is death?? 'Tis but a cessation from mortal life; 'tis but the finishing of an appointed course; the refreshing inn after a fatiguing journey; the end of a life of cares and troubles; and, if happy, the beginning of a life of immortal happiness.

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.

Many a man has been ashamed of his wicked attempts, when he has been repulsed, that would never have been ashamed of them, had he succeeded.

And pray, said I, walking on, how came I to be his Property? What Right has he in me, but such as a Thief may plead to stolen Goods?

I am not apt to run into grave declamations against the times:

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.

Have I nothing new, nothing diverting, in my whimsical way, thou askest in one of thy letters to entertain thee with? and thou tellest me that, when I have least to narrate, to speak in the scottish phrase, I am most diverting, a pretty compliment either to thyself , or to me, to both indeed! a sign that thou hast as frothy a heart as I a head !

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.

That she thought me the prettiest creature she ever beheld. — Creature was her word — We are all creatures, ’tis true: But I think I never was more displeased with the sound of the word Creature, than I was from Lady Anne.

Why should such an angel be plunged so low as into the vulgar offices of domestic life? Were she mine, I should hardly wish to see her a mother unless there were a kind of moral certainty that minds like hers could be propagated.

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?

Доверчивостта е дете на добродушието.

Handsome husbands often make a wife's heart ache.

Why should the guiltless tremble so, when the guilty can possess their minds in peace?

In the mean time, to Balls, Routes, Drums, and so-forth; and to qualify me for these latter,

Were it but to avoid an interview with a father who seem’d to have been too much used to womens tears to be moved by them;

Where the world is inclined to favour, replied I, it is apt to over-rate, as much as it will under-rate where it disfavours.

From her instructions, I had an early notion, that it was much more noble to forgive an injury than to resent it: and to give a life than to take it.

Even now that I have concluded this moving recapitulation, it seems as nothing; and the whole world, my dear is as a bit of dirt under my feet.

They will very probably, by remembring past mistakes, avoid many inconveniencies into which forgetfulness will run you lively ones.

You say that if a woman resolves not to marry till she finds herself addressed to by a man of strict virtue, she must be for ever single. If this be true, what wicked creatures are men! What a dreadful abuse of passions, given them for the noblest purposes, are they guilty of!

It was most gracefully done: But see, Lucy, the example of a good and generous man can sometimes alter natures; and covetous men, I have heard it observed, when their hearts are open’d, often act nobly.

It was “The devil of a Sex.” It was a cursed thing, he said, that a man could be neither happy with them, nor without them. Devil’s baits was another of his compliments to us. He hardly mentioned my name.

Emma that had somehow made its way over the pond; first editions of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela and Fanny Burney’s Camilla, and Corinne by Madame de Staël; and an early edition in French of Dante’s Divine Comedy.

What poor wretches are we, Harriet, men as well as women! We pray for long life; and what is the issue of our prayers, but leave to outlive our teeth and our friends, to stand in the way of our elbowing relations, and to change our swan-skins for skins of buff; which nevertheless will keep out neither cold nor infirmity?

I have often heard my grandfather observe, that men of truly great and brave spirits are most tender and merciful; and that, on the contrary, men of base and low minds are cruel, tyrannical, insolent, where-ever they have power.

If she be a woman, and love me, I shall surely catch her once tripping: for love was ever a traitor to its harbourer: and Love within, and I without, she will be more than a woman, as the poet says, or I less than man, if I succeed not.

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

Well, I don’t care: This life is but a passage, a short passage, to a better: And let one jostle, and another elbow; another push me, because they know the weakest must give way; yet I will endeavour steadily to pursue my course, till I get thro’ it, and into broad and open day.

He has travelled. But is not human nature the same in every country, allowing only for different customs? — Do not Love, hatred, anger, malice, all the passions in short, good or bad, shew themselves by like effects in the faces, hearts,  and actions of the people of every country?

It is unworthy of a man of spirit to be sollicitous to keep himself within the boundaries of human laws, on no other motive than to avoid the temporal inconveniencies attending the breach of them. The laws were not made so much for the direction of good men, as to circumscribe the bad.

I am not to know the contents of his Letter. The hearts of us women, when we are urged to give way to a clandestine and unequal address, or when inclined to favour such a one, are apt, and are pleaded with, to rise against the notions of bargain and sale. Smithfield bargains, you Londoners call them:

Love-matches, my dear, are foolish things. I know not how you will find it some time hence: No general rule, however, without exceptions, you know. Violent Love on one side, is enough in conscience, if the other be not a fool, or ungrateful: The Lover and Lovée make generally the happiest couple. Mild, sedate convenience, is better than a stark staring-mad passion. The wall-climbers, the hedge and ditchleapers, the river-forders, the window-droppers, always find reason to think so. Who ever hears of darts, flames, Cupids, Venus’s, Adonis’s, and suchlike nonsense, in matrimony? — Passion is transitory; but discretion, which never bois over, gives durable  happiness.

Il filosofo che contemplava il teschio di un re e quello di un povero, non vi ravvisò differenza.

They reflected a broader

How true is the observation that unrequited love turns to deepest hate.

Calm down Weston. It was just a window. I wasn’t aiming for your head.” - Samuel

La sciagurata ha troppi difetti di suo per tollerarne di simili in chiunque altro.

La mia anima ha la stessa importanza dell'anima di una principessa, anche se come rango io mi trovo alla pari del più umile schiavo.

A husband's mother and his wife had generally better be visitors than inmates

A beautiful woman must expect to be more accountable for her steps, than one less attractive.

It is much easier to find fault with others, than to be faultless ourselves.

Love is not a volunteer thing.

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.

God send me a friend, that may tell me of my faults: if not, an enemy, and he will.

A promise is an obligation. A just man will keep his promise, a generous man will go beyond it. — This is my rule.

Mr. Hickman, indeed, speaks very handsomely of Mr. Belford. But he, poor man! has not much penetration.—If he had, he would hardly think so well of me as he does.

let me read over again that fearful letter of yours, that I may get it by heart, and with it feed my distress, and make calamity familiar to me.

Truth is truth, my dear!

Why you are like an April Day; you cry and laugh in a Breath.

Il mondo forma i suoi giudizi sulle nostre azioni piuttosto dai fatti che da dove stia la ragione nei casi dubbi.

O my dear! a fond husband is a surfeiting thing; and yet I believe most women love to be made monkeys of.

Forbear, sir, said I; while I have a father and mother, I am not my own mistress, poor as they are; and I'll see myself quite at liberty, before I shall think myself fit to make a choice.

Henry Fielding’s first novel was published in April 1741 under the name of Mr. Conny Keyber and sold for one shilling and sixpence. Although the author never owned to writing the short satirical novel, it is widely considered to be his work. An Apology for the Life of Mrs Shamela Andrews is a direct attack on the contemporary novel Pamela, published in November 1740, by Fielding’s rival Samuel Richardson.

Just as poor Mr Wyerley, and others we both know, profane and ridicule Scripture; and all to evidence their pretensions to the same pernicious talent, and to have it thought that they are too wise to be good.

Indeed, my Marforio, there are very few topics that arise in conversation among men, upon which women ought to open their lips. Silence becomes them. Let them therefore hear, wonder, and improve, in silence. They are naturally contentious, and lovers of contradiction’ [Something like this Mr. Walden once threw out: And you know who, my Lucy, has said as much] ‘and shall we qualify them to be disputants against ourselves?

Sir John gave us such an account of Sir Hargrave, as helped me not only in the character I have given of him, but let me know that he is a very dangerous and enterprising man. He says, that laughing and light as he is in company, he is malicious, ill-natured, and designing; and sticks at nothing to carry a point on which he has once set his heart. He has ruined, Sir John says, three young creatures already under vows of marriage.

God direct you according to them, and comfort you! All my fear was (and that more particularly for some of the last past months) that I should have been the mournful survivor. In a very few moments all my sufferings will be over; and God give you, when you come to this unavoidable period of all human vanity, the same happy prospects that are now opening to me! O Sir, believe me, all worldly joys are now nothing; less than nothing:

I was exceedingly affected, says he, upon the occasion. But was ashamed to be surprised by her into such a fit of unmanly weakness-so ashamed that I was resolved to subdue it at the instant, and guard against the like for the future. Yet, at that moment, I more than half regretted that I could not permit her to enjoy a triumph which she so well deserved to glory in-her youth, her beauty, her artless innocence, and her manner, equally beyond comparison or description. But her indifference, Belford!-That she could resolve to sacrifice me to the malice of my enemies; and carry on the design in so clandestine a manner-yet love her, as I do, to frenzy!-revere her, as I do, to adoration!-These were the recollections with which I fortified my recreant heart against her-Yet, after all, if she persevere, she must conquer!-Coward, as she has made me, that never was a coward before!

You are all too rich to be happy, child. For must not each of you be the constitutions of your family marry to be still richer? People who know in what their main excellence consists are not to be blamed (are they?) for cultivating and improving what they think most valuable? Is true happiness any part of your family-view?—So far from it, that none of your family but yourself could be happy were they not rich. So let them fret on, grumble and grudge, and accumulate; and wondering what ails them that they have not happiness when they have riches, think the cause is want of more; and so go on heaping up till Death, as greedy an accumulator as themselves, gathers them into his garner!

TRUE GENEROSITY is greatness of soul. It incites us to do more by a fellow-creature than can be strictly required of us. It obliges us to hasten to the relief of an object that wants relief; anticipating even such a one’s hope or expectation.

O the unparalleled wickedness, stratagems, and devices, of those who call themselves gentlemen, yet pervert the design of Providence, in giving them ample means to do good, to their own everlasting perdition, and the ruin of poor oppressed innocence!

Mr. Lowther told me just now, that the fault of  the gentlemen who have now the care of him, has not been want of skill, but of critical courage, and a too great solicitude to oblige their patient; which, by their own account, had made them forego several opportunities which had offered to assist nature. In short, Sir, said he, your friend knows too much of his own case to be ruled, and too little to qualify him to direct what is to be done, especially as symptoms must have been frequently changing.

Samuel, I've never considered our relationship to be tragic. I will always remember you as my first love. The first guy who opened me up and saw in me something passionate and strong that needed to be brought to life. Tragic...never. Beautiful...always.

My dearest Clementina, said I, you have shewn so glorious a magnanimity, that it would be injuring you, to suppose you are not equal to every branch of duty. God forbid that you should be called to sustain an unreasonable trial — In a reasonable one, you must be victorious.

I never saw the approaches of death in a grown person before; and was extremely shocked. Death, to one in health, is a very terrible thing. We pity the person for what she suffers: and we pity ourselves for what we must some time hence in like sort suffer; and so are doubly affected.

Lady Olivia enquired after the distance of North hamptonshire. She will make the tour of England, she says, and visit me there. I was obliged to say I should take her visit as an honour. Wicked Politeness! Of how many falshoods dost thou make the people, who are called polite, guilty!

I honour a good, a generous, a brave, and humane soldier: But were such an one to be the bravest of men, how can his wife expect constant protection from the husband who is less his own, and consequently less hers, than almost any other man can be (a sailor excepted); and who must therefore, oftener, than any other man, leave her exposed to those insults, from which she seems to think he can best defend her? Lady L. (smiling) But may it not be said, Sir, that those women who make soldiers their choice, deserve in some degree, a rank with heroes; when they can part with their husbands for the sake of their country’s glory?

Charming creature, thought I (but I charge thee, that thou let not any of the sex know my esultation) is it so soon come to this? Am I already lord of the destiny of a Clarissa Harlowe! Am I already the reformed man thou resolvedst I should be, before I had the least encouragement given me? Is it thus, that the more thou knowest me, the less thou seest reason to approve of me? _And can art and design enter into the breat so celestial; To banish me from thee, to insist so rigorously upon my absence, in order to bring me closer to thee, and make the blessing dear? _Well do thy arts justify mine; and encorage me to let loose my plotting genius upon thee.

O, Sir, said I, either I have not Words, or else the English Tongue affords them not, to express sufficiently my Gratitude. Learn me, dear Sir, continued I, and pressed his dear Hands to my Lips, learn me some other Language, if there be any, that abounds with more grateful Terms, that I may not thus be choaked with Meanings, for which I can find no adequate Utterance.

Mighty well, Mr. Robert! said I; I never saw an execution but once, and then the hangman asked the poor creature's pardon, and wiped his mouth, as you do, and pleaded his duty, and then calmly tucked up the criminal. But I am no criminal, as you all know: And if I could have thought it my duty to obey a wicked master in his unlawful command, I had saved you all the merit of this vile service.

to avoid these comparisons, let us talk of nothing henceforth but equality; although, if the riches of your mind, and your unblemished virtue, be set against my fortune, (which is but an accidental good, as I may call it, and all I have to boast of,) the condescension will be yours; and I shall not think I can possibly deserve you, till, after your sweet example, my future life shall become nearly as blameless as yours.

Ma è certo, questo ve lo devo confessare, che non potrò mai pensare a nessun altro al mondo se non a lui! Presunzione! direte voi; e questo è. Ma l'amore, immagino, non è una cosa volontaria -l'amore, ho detto! Ma andiamo, io non spero: perlomeno non è, spero, andato così lontano da mettermi molto a disagio: poiché io non so come è venuto, né quando è iniziato, ma mi si è insinuato addosso strisciando, strisciando, come un ladro, e prima che sapessi di che si trattava, aveva l'aspetto dell'amore.

I knew that the whole stupid family were in a combination to do my business for me. I told thee that they were all working for me, like so many underground moles; and still more blind than the moles are said to be, unknowing that they did so. I myself, the director of their principal motions; which falling in with the malice of their little hearts, they took to be all their own. Did I say my joy was perfect?-Oh no- It receives some abatement from my disgusted pride. For how can I endure to think that I owe more to her relation's persecutions than to her favour for me? -Or even, as far as I know, to her preference of me to another man? But let me not indulge this thought. Were I to do so, it might cost my charmer dear- Let me rejoice that she has passed the Rubicon: that she cannot return: that, as I have ordered it, the flight will appear to the implacables to be altogether with her own consent: and that if I doubt her love, I can put her to trials as mortifying to her niceness, as glorious to my pride- For, let me tell thee, dearly as I love her, if I thought there was but the shadow of a doubt in her mind whether she preferred me to any man living, I would show her no mercy. Take care!- Take care, oh beloved of my soul: for jealous is the heart in which love has erected a temple to thee.

What then, presumptuous Pamela, dost thou here, thought I? Quit with Speed these guilty Banks, and flee from these dashing Waters, that even in their sounding Murmurs, this still Night, reproach thy Rashness! Tempt not God's Good|ness on the mossy Banks, that have been Witnesses of thy guilty Intentions; and while thou hast Power left thee, avoid the tempting Evil, lest thy grand Enemy, now repuls'd by Divine Grace, and due Reflection, return to the Charge with a Force that thy Weakness may not be able to resist! And lest one rash Moment destroy all the Convictions, which now have aw'd thy rebellious Mind into Duty and Resignation to the Divine Will!

Young girls finding themselves vested with new powers, and a set of new inclinations, turn their staring eyes out of themselves; and the first man they see, they imagine, if he be a single man, and but simpers at them, they must receive him as a Lover: Then they return downcast for ogle, that he may ogle on without interruption. They are soon brought to write answers to Letters which confess flames the writer’s heart never felt. The girl doubts not her own gifts, her own  consequence; she wonders that her father, mother, and other friends, never told her of these new-found excellencies: She is more and more beautiful in her own eyes, as he more and more flatters her. If her parents are a -verse, the girl is per -verse; and the more, the less discretion there is in her passion. She adopts the word constancy; she declaims against persecution; she calls her idle flame, LOVE; which only was a Something she knew not what to make of — and, like a wandering bee, had it not settled on this flower, would on the next, were it either bitter or sweet.