Best 70 quotes of Richard Steele on MyQuotes

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.

A fool is in himself the object of pity, until he is flattered.

Age in a virtuous person, of either sex, carries in it an authority which makes it preferable to all the pleasures of youth.

A healthy old fellow, who is not a fool, is the happiest creature living.

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.

A little in drink, but at all times your faithful husband.

A man advanced in years that thinks fit to look back on his former life, and calls that only life which was passed with satisfaction and enjoyment, excluding all parts which were not pleasant to him, will find himself very young, if not in infancy.

A man cannot have an idea of perfection in another, which he was never sensible of in himself.

A modest person seldom fails to gain the goodwill of those he converses with, because nobody envies a man who does not appear to be pleased with himself.

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

A Woman is naturally more helpless than the other Sex; and a Man of Honour and Sense should have this in his View in all Manner of Commerce with her.

Compassion does not only refine and civilize human nature, but has something in it more pleasing and agreeable, than what can be met with in such an indolent happiness, such an indifference to mankind, as that in which the stoics placed their wisdom. As love is the most delightful passion, pity is nothing else but love softened by a degree of sorrow: In short, it is a kind of pleasing anguish, anguish as well as generous sympathy, that knits mankind together, and blends them in the same common lot.

Conversation never sits easier upon us than when we now and then discharge ourselves in a symphony of laughter, which may not improperly be called the chorus of conversation.

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

How few there are who are furnished with abilities sufficient to recommend their actions to the admiration of the world, and distinguish themselves from the rest of mankind.

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

I look upon it as a Point of Morality, to be obliged by those who endeavour to oblige me

I love to consider an Infidel, whether distinguished by the title of deist, atheist, or free-thinker, by three different lights, in his solitude, his afflictions, and his last moments.... [In these situations such people show themselves] in solitude, incapable or rapture or elevation, ... in distress, [with] a halter or a pistol the only refuge [they] can fly to, ... [and liable to conversion] at the approach of death.

I love to consider an Infidel, whether distinguished by the title of deist, atheist, or free-thinker.

It has been a sort of maxim, that the greatest art is to conceal art; but I know not how, among some people we meet with, their greatest cunning is to appear cunning.

It is a certain sign of an ill heart to be inclined to defamation. They who are harmless and innocent can have no gratification that way; but it ever arises from a neglect of what is laudable in a man's self.

It is an endless and frivolous Pursuit to act by any other Rule than the Care of satisfying our own Minds in what we do

It is an impertinent and unreasonable fault in conversation for one man to take up all the discourse.

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.

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.

It is a wonderful thing that so many, and they not reckoned absurd, shall entertain those with whom they converse by giving them the history of their pains and aches and imagine such narrations their quota of conversation.

It is the duty of a great person so to demean himself, as that whatever endowments he may have, he may appear to value himself upon no qualities but such as any man may arrive at.

It is to beoted that when any part of this paper appears dull there is a design in it.

It may be remarked in general, that the laugh of men of wit is for the most part but a feint, constrained kind of half-laugh, as such persons are never without some diffidence about them; but that of fools is the most honest, natural, open laugh in the world.

I was going home two hours ago, but was met by Mr. Griffith, who has kept me ever since. . . . I will come within a pint of wine.

Many take pleasure in spreading abroad the weakness of an exalted character.

Modesty never rages, never murmurs, never pouts; when it is ill-treated, it pines, it beseeches, it languishes.

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.

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

Nothing is more silly than the pleasure some people take in "speaking their minds." A man of this make will say a rude thing for the mere pleasure of saying it, when an opposite behavior, full as innocent, might have preserved his friend, or made his fortune.

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

Of all the affections which attend human life, the love of glory is the most ardent.

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

Pleasure seizes the whole man who addicts himself to it, and will not give him leisure for any good office in life which contradicts the gayety of the present hour.

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

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

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

Simplicity of all things is the hardest to be copy.

Since our persons are not of our own making, when they are such as appear defective or uncomely, it is, methinks, an honest and laudable fortitude to dare to be ugly.

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.

Such is the weakness of our nature, that when men are a little exalted in their condition they immediately conceive they have additional senses, and their capacities enlarged not only above other men, but above human comprehension itself.

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

The insupportable labor of doing nothing.

The man is mechanically turned, and made for getting. . . . It was verily prettily said that we may learn the little value of fortune by the persons on whom Heaven is pleased to bestow it.

The married state, with and without the affection suitable to it, is the completest image of heaven and hell we are capable of receiving in this life.