Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady Quotes

“I know not my own heart if it be not absolutely free.”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

“Tired of myself longing for what I have not”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

“By my soul, I can neither eat, drink, nor sleep; nor, what's still worse, love any woman in the world but her.”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

“Familiarity destroys reverence.”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

“My heart and my hand shall never be separated.”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

“You know not the value of the heart you have insulted... You, sir, I thank you, have lowered my fortunes: but, I bless God, that my mind is not sunk with my fortunes. It is, on the contrary, raised above fortune, and above you[.]”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

“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, Clarissa, Or The History of a Young Lady

“The person who will bear much shall have much to bear, all the world through.”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

“But these great minds cannot avoid doing extraordinary things!”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

“And what after all, is death?? 'Tis but a cessation from mortal life; 'tis but the finishing of an appointed course; the refreshing inn after a fatiguing journey; the end of a life of cares and troubles; and, if happy, the beginning of a life of immortal happiness.”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

“Have I nothing new, nothing diverting, in my whimsical way, thou askest in one of thy letters to entertain thee with? and thou tellest me that, when I have least to narrate, to speak in the scottish phrase, I am most diverting, a pretty compliment either to thyself , or to me, to both indeed! a sign that thou hast as frothy a heart as I a head !”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

“Whom we fear more than love, we are not far from hating.”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

“You are all too rich to be happy, child. For must not each of you be the constitutions of your family marry to be still richer? People who know in what their main excellence consists are not to be blamed (are they?) for cultivating and improving what they think most valuable? Is true happiness any part of your family-view?—So far from it, that none of your family but yourself could be happy were they not rich. So let them fret on, grumble and grudge, and accumulate; and wondering what ails them that they have not happiness when they have riches, think the cause is want of more; and so go on heaping up till Death, as greedy an accumulator as themselves, gathers them into his garner!”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

“Why should such an angel be plunged so low as into the vulgar offices of domestic life? Were she mine, I should hardly wish to see her a mother unless there were a kind of moral certainty that minds like hers could be propagated.”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

“I knew that the whole stupid family were in a combination to do my business for me. I told thee that they were all working for me, like so many underground moles; and still more blind than the moles are said to be, unknowing that they did so. I myself, the director of their principal motions; which falling in with the malice of their little hearts, they took to be all their own. Did I say my joy was perfect?-Oh no- It receives some abatement from my disgusted pride. For how can I endure to think that I owe more to her relation's persecutions than to her favour for me? -Or even, as far as I know, to her preference of me to another man?
But let me not indulge this thought. Were I to do so, it might cost my charmer dear- Let me rejoice that she has passed the Rubicon: that she cannot return: that, as I have ordered it, the flight will appear to the implacables to be altogether with her own consent: and that if I doubt her love, I can put her to trials as mortifying to her niceness, as glorious to my pride- For, let me tell thee, dearly as I love her, if I thought there was but the shadow of a doubt in her mind whether she preferred me to any man living, I would show her no mercy. Take care!- Take care, oh beloved of my soul: for jealous is the heart in which love has erected a temple to thee.”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

“Charming creature, thought I (but I charge thee, that thou let not any of the sex know my esultation) is it so soon come to this? Am I already lord of the destiny of a Clarissa Harlowe! Am I already the reformed man thou resolvedst I should be, before I had the least encouragement given me? Is it thus, that the more thou knowest me, the less thou seest reason to approve of me? _And can art and design enter into the breat so celestial; To banish me from thee, to insist so rigorously upon my absence, in order to bring me closer to thee, and make the blessing dear? _Well do thy arts justify mine; and encorage me to let loose my plotting genius upon thee.”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

“If she be a woman, and love me, I shall surely catch her once tripping: for love was ever a traitor to its harbourer: and Love within, and I without, she will be more than a woman, as the poet says, or I less than man, if I succeed not.”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

“I never saw the approaches of death in a grown person before; and was extremely shocked. Death, to one in health, is a very terrible thing. We pity the person for what she suffers: and we pity ourselves for what we must some time hence in like sort suffer; and so are doubly affected.”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

“Truth is truth, my dear!”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

“A promise is an obligation. A just man will keep his promise, a generous man will go beyond it. — This is my rule.”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

“Mr. Hickman, indeed, speaks very handsomely of Mr. Belford. But he, poor man! has not much penetration.—If he had, he would hardly think so well of me as he does.”
― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa