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The insupportable labor of doing nothing.

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
Insupportable
Laziness
Labor
Nothing

More quotes by 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.
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The praise of an ignorant man is only good-will, and you should receive his kindness as he is a good neighbor in society, and not as a good judge of your actions in point of fame and reputation.
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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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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.
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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.
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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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Violins are the lively, forward, importunate wits, that distinguish themselves by the flourishes of imagination, sharpness of repartee, glances of satire, and bear away the upper part in every consort.
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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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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I was going home two hours ago, but was met by Mr. Griffith, who has kept me ever since. . . . I will come within a pint of wine.
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It is the duty of a great person so to demean himself, as that whatever endowments he may have, he may appear to value himself upon no qualities but such as any man may arrive at.
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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.
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
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It is a wonderful thing that so many, and they not reckoned absurd, shall entertain those with whom they converse by giving them the history of their pains and aches and imagine such narrations their quota of conversation.
Richard Steele
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I look upon it as a Point of Morality, to be obliged by those who endeavour to oblige me
Richard Steele
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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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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.
Richard Steele
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I know of no manner of speaking so offensive as that of giving praise, and closing it with an exception.
Richard Steele
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Many take pleasure in spreading abroad the weakness of an exalted character.
Richard Steele
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A favor well bestowed is almost as great an honor to him who confers it as to him who receives it.
Richard Steele