Samuel Richardson > Quotes

“I know not my own heart if it be not absolutely free.”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

“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, Pamela

“Tired of myself longing for what I have not”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

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

“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, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

“Familiarity destroys reverence.”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

“I will be a Friend to you, and you shall take care of my Linen”
― Samuel Richardson, Pamela

“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, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

“My heart and my hand shall never be separated.”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

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

“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, Clarissa, Or The History of a Young Lady

“...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, Pamela

“The person who will bear much shall have much to bear, all the world through.”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

“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, Pamela

“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, Clarissa Harlowe: Or, The History of a Young Lady, Vol. 1

“Love gratified is love satisfied,
and love satisfied is indifference begun”
― Samuel Richardson

“But these great minds cannot avoid doing extraordinary things!”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

“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, Pamela

“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 !”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

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

“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.”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

“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, Pamela

“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, Pamela

“to be courted as princesses for a few weeks, in order to be treated as slaves for the rest of our lives.”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady - Volume 1

“Whom we fear more than love, we are not far from hating.”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

“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.”
― Samuel Richardson, Complete Works of Samuel Richardson

“The tenderest and most generous minds, when harshly treated, become generally the most inflexible.”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa Harlowe or the History of a Young Lady - Volume 5

“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, Pamela

“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!”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa Harlowe or the History of a Young Lady, V1

“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, Pamela