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!

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.

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

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.

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!

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

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

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.

But these great minds cannot avoid doing extraordinary things!

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

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.

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 !

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

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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

But it was not until Samuel Richardson’s Pamela in 1740 and, a decade later, Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, that the novel reached the form as we know it today, and opened an outpouring of work in 19C that would transform literature throughout the West.

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!

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?

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

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

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.

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

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;

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

Handsome husbands often make a wife's heart ache.

Доверчивостта е дете на добродушието.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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!

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:

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!

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:

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.

Lucrul ce s-a observat cel mai puţin, şi care va face totdeauna o scriere unică, este simpltiatea subiectului şi desfăşurarea povestirii, care, concentrată între trei persoane, se susţine de-a lungul a şase volume, fără întâmplări, fără aventuri ca în romane, fără răutăţi de nici un fel, nici în personaje, nici în fapte. Diderot i-a adus mari laude lui Samuel Richardson pentru mulţimea personajelor sale. Richardson are, în adevăr, meritul de a le fi descris pe toate bine; cât despre numărul lor, el este asemenea celor mai searbezi romancieri, care înlocuiesc sărăcia ideilor prin bogăţia personajelor şi a întâmplărilor. E uşor să trezeşti atenţia, prezentând la nesfârşit şi fapte nemaipomenite şi chipuri noi, care se perindă ca imaginile din lanterna magică; dar a ţine mereu trează atenţia asupra aceloraşi lucruri, şi fără aventuri uluitoare, asta este, desigur, mai greu; şi dacă, lăsând la o parte altele, simplitatea subiectului contribuie la frumuseţea operei, romanele lui Richardson, superioare în atâtea alte privinţe, nu vor putea fi, sub acest raport, puse în paralelă cu al meu. El e mort, totuşi, o ştiu, şi ştiu şi din ce cauză; dar va învia.

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.

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.

Sir Thomas Mansfield was a very good man; and much respected in his neighbourhood. He was once possessed of a large estate; but his father left him involved in a law-suit to support his title to more than one half of it. After it had been depending several years, it was at last, to the deep regret of all who knew him, by the ehicanery of the lawyers of the opposite side, and the remissness of his own, carried against him; and his expences having been very great in supporting for years his possession, he found himself reduced from an estate of near three thousand pounds a year, to little more than five hundred.

What, my good Sir, is this span of life, that a passenger through it should seek to overturn the interests of others to establish her own? And can the single life be a grievance? Can it be destitute of the noblest tendernesses?

But I have no patience with you, sinner as you are against light, and better knowlege! and derider of the infirmities, not of old maids, but of old age! — Don’t you hope to live long, yourself?

We seem, however, to be drawing up our forces on both sides. — One struggle for my dying liberty, my dear! — The success of one pitched battle will determine which is to be the general, which the subaltern, for the rest of the campaign. To dare to be sullen already! — As I hope to live, my dear, I was in high good humour within myself; and when he was foolish, only intended a little play with him; and he takes it in earnest. He worships you: So I shall railly him before you: But I charge you, as the man by his sullenness has taken upon him to fight his own battle, either to be on my side, or be silent. I shall take it very ill of my Harriet, if she strengthen his hands. Well, but enough of this husband — HUSBAND! What a word!

Is not friendship the basis of my Love?

As for mothers, many of them are for escorting their daughters to public places, because they themselves like racketing.

And added, that as nervous disorders were more frequent in England, than in any country in the world, he was willing to hope, that the English physicians were more skilful than those of any other country in the management of persons afflicted with such maladies:

If I regard my intention, gratitude, for a life preserved by you, and for a sense of my social duties (soul as well as body indebted to you, tho’ a Protestant yourself) will not suffer it. Is there then nobody whom we can blame for the calamity befallen us? — How strangely is that calamity circumstanced! But is there so irreconcileable a difference between the two religious?

Explain yourself to me upon this compromise. If I can smooth the way between you — Yet I despair that any-thing will do but your conversion. They love your soul; they think they love it better than you do yourself. Is there not a merit in them, which you cannot boast in return?

One of the brides, I forget which, fainted away; another half-fainted — Sav’d by timely salts: The third, poor soul, wept heartily — as I suppose I shall do, on Tuesday.

These vile men! I believe I shall hate them all. Did they partake — But not half so grateful as the blackbirds: They rather look big with insolence, than perch near, and sing a song to confort the poor souls they have so dreadfully mortified. Other birds, as I have observed (sparrows, in particular) sit hour and hour, he’s and she’s, in turn; and I have seen the hen, when her rogue has staid too long, rattle at him, while he circles about her with sweeping wings, and displayed plumage, his head and breast of various dyes, ardently shining, peep, peep, peep; as much as to say, I beg your pardon, love — I was forced to go a great way off for my dinner. — Sirrah! I have thought she has said, in an unforgiving accent — Do your duty now — Sit close — Peep, peep, peep — I will, I will, I will — Away has she skimmed, and returned to relieve him — when she thought fit.

More joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety-and-nine just persons, who need it not.

I would no more renounce my Country than my Religion: I would leave posterity free; but would not deprive them of an attachment that I value myself upon: Nor yet my country, of a family that never gave it cause to be ashamed of it.

Ah, Sir, said she, a man of your observation must know, that the daughters of a decayed family of some note in the world, do not easily get husbands. Men of great fortunes look higher: Men of small must look out for wives to enlarge them; and men of genteel businesses are afraid of young women better born than portioned. Every-body knows not that my girls can bend to their condition; and they must be contented to live single all their lives;

The asides, as you call them, and the soliloquies, in a play, however frequent, are very poor (because unnatural) shifts of bungling authors, to make their performances intelligible to the audience.

Such a kittenish disposition in her, I called it; for it is not so much the love of power that predominates in her mind, as the love of playfulness: And when the fit is upon her, she regards not whether it is a China cup, or a cork, that she pats and tosses about: But her sport will certainly be the death of Lord G’s happiness.

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!

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.

Travelling! Young men travelling! I cannot, my dear, but think it a very nonsensical thing! What can they see, but the ruins of the gay, once busy world, of which they have read? To see a parcel of giddy boys, under the direction of tutors, or governors, hunting after — What? — Nothing; or at best but ruins of ruins; for the imagination, aided by reflection, must be lest, after all, to make out the greater glories which the grave-digger Time has buried too deep for discovery.

They say the Church-yard is crouded with more of the living, than of the dead, and there is hardly room  for a spade. What an image, on such a day!

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

Sir Charles has made a man of him, once more. His dress is as gay as ever; and, I dare say, he struts as much in it as ever, in company that knows not how he came by it. He reformed! — Bad habits are of the Jerusalem artichoke-kind; once planted, there is no getting them out of the ground.

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.

Indeed, said Mrs. Reeves, I believe in England many a poor girl goes up the hill with a companion she would little care for, if the state of a single woman were not here so peculiarly unprovided and helpless: For girls of slender fortunes, if they have been genteelly brought up, how can they, when familyconnexions are dissolved, support themselves? A man can rise in a profession, and if he acquires wealth in a trade, can get above it, and be respected. A woman is looked upon as demeaning herself, if she gains a maintenance by her needle, or by domestic attendance on a superior; and without them where has she a retreat?

Is there any-thing that you particularly like in the situation of that house? Houses, Sir, nay, Countries, will be alike to me, in the company of those I value.

Odd characters, my dear, are needful to make even characters shine. You good girls would not be valued as you are, if there were not bad ones.

I need not tell you that Mr. Greville and Mr. Fenwick attended us to our first baiting; and had a genteel dinner ready provided for us: The gentlemen will tell you this, and all particulars. They both renewed their menaces of following me to London, if I stay’d above one month.

I have lived to a great age: Yet to look backward to the time of my youth, when I was not a stranger to the hopes and fears that now agitate you, what a short space does it seem to be!

to discover day in an artful woman’s heart. Nothing can be weaker, in the eye of an observer, who himself disdains artifice, than a woman who makes artifice her study. In such a departure from honest nature, there will be such curvings, that the eyes, the countenance, must ever betray the heart; while the lips, either breaking out into apologies, or aiming at reserve, confirm the suspicion, that all is not right in the mind.