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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
Human
Humans
Comparative
Much
Meanest
Excel
Fancy
Excellence
May
Persons

More quotes by Samuel Richardson

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If the education and studies of children were suited to their inclinations and capacities, many would be made useful members of society that otherwise would make no figure in it.
Samuel Richardson
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Good men must be affectionate men.
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People hardly ever do anything in anger, of which they do not repent.
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What a world is this! What is there in it desirable? The good we hope for so strangely mixed, that one knows not what to wish for!And one half of mankind tormenting the other, and being tormented themselves in tormenting!
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The eye is the casement at which the heart generally looks out. Many a woman who will not show herself at the door, has tipt the sly, the intelligible wink from the window.
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What we want to tell, we wish our friend to have curiosity to hear.
Samuel Richardson
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Women's eyes are wanderers, and too often bring home guests that are very troublesome to them, and whom, once introduced, they cannot get out of the house.
Samuel Richardson
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There cannot be any great happiness in the married life except each in turn give up his or her own humors and lesser inclinations.
Samuel Richardson
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Men are less forgiving than women.
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Spiritual pride is the most dangerous and the most arrogant of all sorts of pride.
Samuel Richardson
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What pity that Religion and Love, which heighten our relish for the things of both worlds, should ever run the human heart into enthusiasm, superstition, or uncharitableness!
Samuel Richardson
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In all Works of This, and of the Dramatic Kind, STORY, or AMUSEMENT, should be considered as little more than the Vehicle to the more necessary INSTRUCTION.
Samuel Richardson
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Love is a blazing, crackling, green-wood flame, as much smoke as flame friendship, married friendship particularly, is a steady,intense, comfortable fire. Love, in courtship, is friendship in hope in matrimony, friendship upon proof.
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People of little understanding are most apt to be angry when their sense is called into question.
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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
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To be a clergyman, and all that is compassionate and virtuous, ought to be the same thing.
Samuel Richardson
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The wisest among us is a fool in some things.
Samuel Richardson
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What likelihood is there of corrupting a man who has no ambition.
Samuel Richardson
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Youth is rather to be pitied than envied by people in years since it is doomed to toil through the rugged road of life which the others have passed through, in search of happiness that is not to be met with in it and that, at the highest, can be compounded for only by the blessing of a contented mind.
Samuel Richardson
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Prejudices in disfavor of a person fix deeper, and are much more difficult to be removed, than prejudices in favor.
Samuel Richardson