Quotes by Samuel Richardson

“Except by Clarissa Harlowe I was never so moved by a work of genius as by Othello. I read seventeen hours a day at Clarissa, and held the book so long up leaning on my elbows in an arm-chair, that ...”

“Sir, there is more knowledge of the heart in one letter of Richardson's, than in all Tom Jones.”

“But in spite of his flatness and insensitiveness, his talent was great. His success came from the fact that he did know how people feel, and, above that, he could paint the intricacy of tragic feel...”

“Men eminent for piety, wisdom, and virtue, have recommended Richardson's Clarissa from the pulpit; a work which Dr. Johnson, (so generally unwilling to praise) has been often heard to pronounce, no...”

“Richardson was popular because he gave voice to sentiments that were already latent in society; it was because he anticipated the younger generation by giving expression to these feelings that he w...”

“When his story of Pamela first came out, some extracts got into the public papers, and used by that means to find their way down as far as Preston in Lancashire, where my aunt who told me the story...”

“Richardson is among English novelists the first analyst of the mind and the emotions: he is the inaugurator of the psychological novel. But his method differs widely from that of the psychological ...”