Handsome husbands often make a wife's heart ache.
— Samuel Richardson
The most revealing Samuel Richardson quotes that are little-known but priceless
Sorrow makes an ugly face odious.
Spiritual pride is the most dangerous and the most arrogant of all sorts of pride.
That dangerous but too commonly received notion, that a reformed rake makes the best husband.
'Passion' a word which involves so many feelings.
I feel it when we touch; I feel it when we kiss; I feel it when I look at you. For you are my passion; my one true love.
To what a bad choice is many a worthy woman betrayed, by that false and inconsiderate notion, That a reformed rake makes the best husband!
Honeymoon lasts not nowadays above a fortnight.
Great allowances ought to be made for the petulance of persons labouring under ill-health.
To be a clergyman, and all that is compassionate and virtuous, ought to be the same thing.
Necessity may well be called the mother of invention but calamity is the test of integrity.
It is better to be thought perverse than insincere.
A good man, though he will value his own countrymen, yet will think as highly of the worthy men of every nation under the sun.
Parents sometimes make not those allowances for youth, which, when young, they wished to be made for themselves.
For the human mind is seldom at stay: If you do not grow better, you will most undoubtedly grow worse.
Friendship is the perfection of love, and superior to love;
it is love purified, exalted, proved by experience and a consent of minds. Love, Madam, may, and love does, often stop short of friendship.
Calamity is the test of integrity.
I have my choice: who can wish for more? Free will enables us to do everything well while imposition makes a light burden heavy.
Love will draw an elephant through a key-hole.
People of little understanding are most apt to be angry when their sense is called into question.
A beautiful woman must expect to be more accountable for her steps, than one less attractive.
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.
Women are so much in love with compliments that rather than want them, they will compliment one another, yet mean no more by it than the men do.
What pleasure can those over-happy persons know, who, from their affluence and luxury, always eat before they are hungry and drink before they are thirsty?
Air and manners are more expressive than words.
It is but shaping the bribe to the taste, and every one has his price.
The little words in the Republic of Letters, like the little folks in a nation, are the most useful and significant.
The companion of an evening, and the companion for life, require very different qualifications.
An honest heart is not to be trusted with itself in bad company.
It may be very generous in one person to offer what it would be ungenerous in another to accept.
What we want to tell, we wish our friend to have curiosity to hear.
A widow's refusal of a lover is seldom so explicit as to exclude hope.
Love gratified is love satisfied, and love satisfied is indifference begun.
Smatterers in learning are the most opinionated.
Nothing in human nature is so God-like as the disposition to do good to our fellow-creatures.
Those who can least bear a jest upon themselves, will be most diverted with one passed on others.
As a child is indulged or checked in its early follies, a ground is generally laid for the happiness or misery of the future man.
All human excellence is but comparative — there are persons who excel us, as much as we fancy we excel the meanest.
The World, thinking itself affronted by superior merit, takes delight to bring it down to its own level.
Friendly satire may be compared to a fine lancet, which gently breathes a vein for health's sake.
There cannot be any great happiness in the married life except each in turn give up his or her own humors and lesser inclinations.
What likelihood is there of corrupting a man who has no ambition.
What we look upon as our greatest unhappiness in a difficulty we are involved in, may possibly be the evil hastening to its crisis, and happy days may ensue.
The mind can be but full. It will be as much filled with a small disagreeable occurrence, having no other, as with a large one.
Love before marriage is absolutely necessary.
O! what a Godlike Power is that of doing Good! I envy the Rich and the Great for nothing else!
Rakes are more suspicious than honest men.
Chastity, like piety, is a uniform grace.
It is much easier to find fault with others, than to be faultless ourselves.
The grace that makes every grace amiable is humility.
Shame is a fitter and generally a more effectual punishment for a child than beating.