Samuel Richardson

“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.”

“Quantity in food is more to be regarded than quality. A full meal is a great enemy both to study and industry.”

“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.”

“As a child is indulged or checked in its early follies, a ground is generally laid for the happiness or misery of the future man.”

“Where words are restrained, the eyes often talk a great deal.”

“Hope is the cordial that keeps life from stagnating.”

“A widow's refusal of a lover is seldom so explicit as to exclude hope.”

“Married people should not be quick to hear what is said by either when in ill humor.”

“From sixteen to twenty, all women, kept in humor by their hopes and by their attractions, appear to be good-natured.”

“Smatterers in learning are the most opinionated.”

“Let a man do what he will by a single woman, the world is encouragingly apt to think Marriage a sufficient amends.”

“Love before marriage is absolutely necessary.”

“Men will bear many things from a kept mistress, which they would not bear from a wife.”

“Nothing in human nature is so God-like as the disposition to do good to our fellow-creatures.”

“Every one, more or less, loves Power, yet those who most wish for it are seldom the fittest to be trusted with it.”

“O! what a Godlike Power is that of doing Good! I envy the Rich and the Great for nothing else!”

“Vast is the field of Science. The more a man knows, the more he will find he has to know.”

“The plays and sports of children are as salutary to them as labor and work are to grown persons.”

“There is a pride, a self-love, in human minds that will seldom be kept so low as to make men and women humbler than they ought to be.”

“Women do not often fall in love with philosophers.”

“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.”

“Women love to be called cruel, even when they are kindest.”

“Women are always most observed when they seem themselves least to observe, or to lay out for observation.”

“The Cause of Women is generally the Cause of Virtue.”