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The world is grown so full of dissimulation and compliment, that men's words are hardly any signification of their thoughts.

Richard Steele

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Richard Steele
Age: 57 †
Born: 1672
Born: March 12
Died: 1729
Died: September 1
Journalist
Playwright
Politician
Writer
Dublin city
Sir Richard Steele
World
Flattery
Compliment
Hardly
Grown
Thoughts
Full
Words
Signification
Men
Dissimulation

More quotes by Richard Steele

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Pride destroys all symmetry and grace, and affectation is a more terrible enemy to fine faces than the small-pox.
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Since our persons are not of our own making, when they are such as appear defective or uncomely, it is, methinks, an honest and laudable fortitude to dare to be ugly.
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Vanity makes people ridiculous, pride odious, and ambition terrible.
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Though very troublesome to others, anger is most so to him that has it.
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Whenever you commend, add your reasons for doing so it is this which distinguishes the approbation of a man of sense from the flattery of sycophants and admiration of fools.
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I cannot think of any character below the flatterer, except he who envies him
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I love to consider an Infidel, whether distinguished by the title of deist, atheist, or free-thinker.
Richard Steele
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A Woman is naturally more helpless than the other Sex and a Man of Honour and Sense should have this in his View in all Manner of Commerce with her.
Richard Steele
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It may be remarked in general, that the laugh of men of wit is for the most part but a feint, constrained kind of half-laugh, as such persons are never without some diffidence about them but that of fools is the most honest, natural, open laugh in the world.
Richard Steele
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The insupportable labor of doing nothing.
Richard Steele
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It has been a sort of maxim, that the greatest art is to conceal art but I know not how, among some people we meet with, their greatest cunning is to appear cunning.
Richard Steele
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It is a very melancholy reflection that men are usually so weak that it is absolutely necessary for them to know sorrow and pain to be in their right senses.
Richard Steele
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Zeal for the public good is the characteristic of a man of honor and a gentleman, and must take the place of pleasures, profits and all other private gratifications.
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The man is mechanically turned, and made for getting. . . . It was verily prettily said that we may learn the little value of fortune by the persons on whom Heaven is pleased to bestow it.
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He that has sense knows that learning is not knowledge, but rather the art of using it.
Richard Steele
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There can hardly, I believe, be imagined a more desirable pleasure than that of praise unmixed with any possibility of flattery.
Richard Steele
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When a man is not disposed to hear music, there is not a more disagreeable sound in harmony than that of the violin.
Richard Steele
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Modesty never rages, never murmurs, never pouts when it is ill-treated, it pines, it beseeches, it languishes.
Richard Steele
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Conversation never sits easier upon us than when we now and then discharge ourselves in a symphony of laughter, which may not improperly be called the chorus of conversation.
Richard Steele
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The survivorship of a worthy man in his son is a pleasure scarce inferior to the hopes of the continuance of his own life.
Richard Steele