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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
Much
Meanest
Excel
Fancy
Excellence
May
Persons
Human
Humans
Comparative

More quotes by Samuel Richardson

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Superstitious notions propagated in infancy are hardly ever totally eradicate, not even in minds grown strong enough to despise the like credulous folly in others.
Samuel Richardson
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Evil courses can yield pleasure no longer than while thought and reflection can be kept off.
Samuel Richardson
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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
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When we reflect upon the cruelties daily practised upon such of the animal creation as are given us for food, or which we ensnarefor our diversion, we shall be obliged to own that there is more of the savage in human nature than we are aware of.
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Tho' Beauty is generally the creature of fancy, yet are there some who will be Beauties in every eye.
Samuel Richardson
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The World, thinking itself affronted by superior merit, takes delight to bring it down to its own level.
Samuel Richardson
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Platonic love is platonic nonsense.
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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It is but shaping the bribe to the taste, and every one has his price.
Samuel Richardson
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A good man, though he will value his own countrymen, yet will think as highly of the worthy men of every nation under the sun.
Samuel Richardson
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The readiness with which women are apt to forgive the men who have deceived other women and that inconsiderate notion of too many of them that a reformed rake makes the best husband, are great encouragements to vile men to continue their profligacy.
Samuel Richardson
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Women do not often fall in love with philosophers.
Samuel Richardson
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The coyest maids make the fondest wives.
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 grace that makes every grace amiable is humility.
Samuel Richardson
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O! what a Godlike Power is that of doing Good! I envy the Rich and the Great for nothing else!
Samuel Richardson
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Women are so much in love with compliments that rather than want them, they will compliment one another, yet mean no more by it than the men do.
Samuel Richardson
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Virtue only is the true beauty.
Samuel Richardson
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There are men who think themselves too wise to be religious.
Samuel Richardson