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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
Persons
Human
Humans
Comparative
Much
Meanest
Excel
Fancy
Excellence
May

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Men will bear many things from a kept mistress, which they would not bear from a wife.
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Friendship is the perfection of love, and superior to love it is love purified, exalted, proved by experience and a consent of minds. Love, Madam, may, and love does, often stop short of friendship.
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Good men must be affectionate men.
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It is better to be thought perverse than insincere.
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Honesty is good sense, politeness, amiableness,--all in one.
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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.
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The uselessness and expensiveness of modern women multiply bachelors.
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Tho' Beauty is generally the creature of fancy, yet are there some who will be Beauties in every eye.
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The World, thinking itself affronted by superior merit, takes delight to bring it down to its own level.
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Parents cannot expect advice to have the same force upon their children as experience has upon themselves.
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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.
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Every scholar, I presume, is not, necessarily, a man of sense.
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The seeds of Death are sown in us when we begin to live, and grow up till, like rampant weeds, they choak the tender flower of life.
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Men know no medium: They will either, spaniel-like, fawn at your feet, or be ready to leap into your lap.
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That dangerous but too commonly received notion, that a reformed rake makes the best husband.
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Evil courses can yield pleasure no longer than while thought and reflection can be kept off.
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Romances in general are calculated rather to fire the imagination, than to inform the judgment.
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O! what a Godlike Power is that of doing Good! I envy the Rich and the Great for nothing else!
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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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What the unpenetrating world call Humanity, is often no more than a weak mind pitying itself.
Samuel Richardson