Richard Steele Quotes

Fire and swords are slow engines of destruction, compared to the tongue of a Gossip.

Readings is to the mind what exercice is to the body.

Among all the diseases of the mind there is not one more epidemical or more pernicious than the love of flattery.

Vanity makes people ridiculous, pride odious, and ambition terrible.

People spend their lives in the service of their passions instead of employing their passions in the service of their lives.

He that has sense knows that learning is not knowledge, but rather the art of using it.

Simplicity of all things is the hardest to be copy.

There is no Pleasure like that of receiving Praise from the Praiseworthy

Whoever would be wise should read the Proverbs; whoever would be holy should read the Psalms.

I know of no manner of speaking so offensive as that of giving praise, and closing it with an exception.

A lie is troublesome, and sets a man's invention upon the rack, and one trick needs a great many more to make it good.

The person, whom you favored with a loan, if he be a good man, will think himself in your debt after he has paid you.

Pride destroys all symmetry and grace, and affectation is a more terrible enemy to fine faces than the small-pox.

Whether a pretty woman grants or withholds her favors, she always likes to be asked for them.

Nothing can atone for the lack of modesty; without which beauty is ungraceful and wit detestable.

A Daughter: The companion, the friend, and the confidant of her mother, and the object of a pleasure something like the love between the angels to her father.

No woman is capable of being beautiful who is not incapable of being false.

It is a very melancholy reflection that men are usually so weak that it is absolutely necessary for them to know sorrow and pain to be in their right senses.

Pleasure, when it is a man's chief purpose, disappoints itself; and the constant application to it palls the faculty of enjoying it.

That man never grows old who keeps a child in his heart

Since we cannot promise our selves constant health, let us endeavour at such temper as may be our best support in the decay of it.

The world is grown so full of dissimulation and compliment, that men's words are hardly any signification of their thoughts.

Praise from an enemy is the most pleasing of all commendations.

It is a secret known but to few, yet of no small use in the conduct of life, that when you fall into a man's conversation, the first thing you should consider is, whether he has a greater inclination to hear you, or that you should hear him.

Mutual good humor is a dress we ought to appear in wherever we meet, and we should make no mention of what concerns ourselves, without it be of matters wherein our friends ought to rejoice.