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All human excellence is but comparative — there are persons who excel us, as much as we fancy we excel the meanest.

Samuel Richardson

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Samuel Richardson
Age: 73 †
Born: 1687
Born: August 19
Died: 1761
Died: July 4
Novelist
Writer
S. Richardson
May
Persons
Human
Humans
Comparative
Much
Meanest
Excel
Fancy
Excellence

More quotes by Samuel Richardson

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Who would not rather be the sufferer than the defrauder?
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All our pursuits, from childhood to manhood, are only trifles of different sorts and sizes, proportioned to our years and views.
Samuel Richardson
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Those commands of superiors which are contrary to our first duties are not to be obeyed.
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Things we wish to be true are apt to gain too ready credit with us.
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I never knew a man who deserved to be thought well of for his morals who had a slight opinion of our Sex in general.
Samuel Richardson
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The person who will bear much shall have much to bear, all the world through.
Samuel Richardson
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A widow's refusal of a lover is seldom so explicit as to exclude hope.
Samuel Richardson
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Necessity may well be called the mother of invention but calamity is the test of integrity.
Samuel Richardson
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Love will draw an elephant through a key-hole.
Samuel Richardson
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The richest princes and the poorest beggars are to have one great and just judge at the last day who will not distinguish betweenthem according to their ranks when in life but according to the neglected opportunities afforded to each. How much greater then, as the opportunities were greater, must be the condemnation of the one than of the other?
Samuel Richardson
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Whenever we approve, we can find a hundred good reasons to justify our approbation. Whenever we dislike, we can find a thousand to justify our dislike.
Samuel Richardson
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The world, the wise world, that never is wrong itself, judges always by events. And if he should use me ill, then I shall be blamed for trusting him: if well, O then I did right, to be sure!--But how would my censurers act in my case, before the event justifies or condemns the action, is the question.
Samuel Richardson
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Vast is the field of Science... the more a man knows, the more he will find he has to know.
Samuel Richardson
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The wife of a self-admirer must expect a very cold and negligent husband.
Samuel Richardson
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From sixteen to twenty, all women, kept in humor by their hopes and by their attractions, appear to be good-natured.
Samuel Richardson
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I am forced, as I have often said, to try to make myself laugh, that I may not cry: for one or other I must do.
Samuel Richardson
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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
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A fop takes great pains to hang out a sign, by his dress, of what he has within.
Samuel Richardson
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The World is not enough used to this way of writing, to the moment. It knows not that in the minutiae lie often the unfoldings ofthe Story, as well as of the heart and judges of an action undecided, as if it were absolutely decided.
Samuel Richardson
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Women are sometimes drawn in to believe against probability by the unwillingness they have to doubt their own merit.
Samuel Richardson