Sir Richard Steele (1672–1729,) pseudonym Isaac Bickerstaff, Irish essayist, dramatist, journalist, and politician. Considered the father of journalism, he is best known as a principal author (with Joseph Addison) of the periodicals The Tatler and The Spectator.
Born in Dublin, Steele was educated at Charterhouse, where Joseph Addison was a contemporary, and Merton College, Oxford. Steele entered the army as a cadet in the Life Guards and wrote the dramas The Funeral (1701,) The Lying Lover (1703,) and The Tender Husband (1705.) He subsequently became the writer of The London Gazette, the official government journal.
Steele started the Tatler, published thrice-weekly 1709–11, and wrote almost all of the content. Started as a newspaper to feed the arguments of “coffee-house politicians,” it soon became a compendium of gossip, reviews, contemporary satire, and energetic social and moral essays, with intermittent articles on literature.
With Addison Steele also founded The Spectator (1711–12) and The Guardian (s.1743.) He briefly entered parliament (1713.)
University of North Carolina English professor Richmond Pugh Bond wrote the biography The Tatler (1972.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Richard Steele
Simplicity, of all things, is the hardest to be copied.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Simplicity
There is nothing that wears out a fine face like the vigils of the card-table, and those cutting passions which naturally attend them. Hollow eyes, haggard looks, and pale complexions are the natural indications of a female gamester. Her morning sleeps are not able to repay her midnight watchings.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Gambling
Pleasure, when it is a man’s chief purpose, disappoints itself; and the constant application to it palls the faculty of enjoying it, and leaves the sense of our inability for that we wish, with a disrelish of everything else. Thus the intermediate seasons of the man of pleasure are more heavy than one would impose upon the vilest criminal.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Pleasure
Though every old man has been young, and every young one hopes to be old, there seems to be a most unnatural misunderstanding between those two stages of life. This unhappy want of commerce arises from arrogance or exultation in youth, and irrational despondence or self-pity in age.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Old Age
To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Beauty
Age in a virtuous person, of either sex, carries in it an authority which makes it preferable to all the pleasures of youth.
—Richard Steele
A man advanced in years, who thinks fit to look back upon his former life, and call that only life which was passed with satisfaction and enjoyment, will find himself very young, if not in his infancy.
—Richard Steele
Human life is too short to recompense the cares which attend the most private condition: therefore it is, that our souls are made, as it were, too big for it; and extend themselves in the prospect of a longer existence, in good fame, and memory of worthy actions, after our decease.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Fame, Immortality
A woman seldom writes her Mind, but in her Postscript.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Letters
Conscience, honor, and credit, are all in our interest; and without the concurrence of the former, the latter are but impositions upon ourselves and others.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Conscience
I cannot think of any character below the flatterer, except he who envies him.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Flattery
Men spend their lives in the service of their passions, instead of employing their passions in the service of their life.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Passion
I consider the soul of man as the ruin of a glorious pile of buildings; where, amidst great heaps of rubbish, you meet with noble fragments of sculpture, broken pillars and obelisks, and a magnificence in confusion.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Soul
To have good sense and ability to express it are the most essential and necessary qualities in companions. When thoughts rise in us fit to utter among familiar friends, there needs but very little care in clothing them.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Style
The most necessary talent in a man of conversation, which is what we ordinarily intend by a gentleman, is a good judgment. He that has this in perfection is master of his companion, without letting him see it; and has the same advantage over men of other qualifications, as one that can see would have over a blind man of ten times his strength.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Judgment
Among all the diseases of the mind there is not one more epidemical or more pernicious than the love of flattery.
—Richard Steele
This portable quality of good humor seasons all the parts and occurrences we meet with in such a manner that there are no moments lost, but they all pass with so much satisfaction that the heaviest of loads, when it is a load, that of time, is never felt by us.
—Richard Steele
Wisdom, valor, justice, and learning cannot keep in countenance a man that is possessed with these excellences, if he wants that inferior art of life and behavior called good breeding.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Manners
It is not easy to surround life with any circumstances in which youth will not be delightful; and I am afraid that, whether married or unmarried, we shall find the vesture of terrestrial existence more heavy and cumbrous the longer it is worn.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Youth
Though her (Lady Elizabeth Hastings) mien carries much more invitation than command, to behold her is an immediate check to loose behavior; to love her was a liberal education.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Influence, Women
Tradition is not a fetish to be prayed to-but a useful record of experiences. Time should bring improvement-but not all old things are worthless. We are served by both the moderns and the ancients. The balanced man is he who clings to the best in the old-and appropriates the desirable in the new.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Generations
He that wants good sense is unhappy in having learning, for he has thereby only more ways of exposing himself; and he that has sense knows that learning is not knowledge, but rather the art of using it.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Learning
Nothing can atone for the lack of modesty; without which beauty is ungraceful and wit detestable.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Humility, Modesty
I know of no manner of speaking so offensive as that of giving praise, and closing it with an exception.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Praise
Equality is the life of conversation; and he is as much out who assumes to himself any part above another, as he who considers himself below the rest of society.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Equality
Praise from an enemy is the most pleasing of all commendations.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Praise
It is certainly a very important lesson, to learn how to enjoy ordinary things, and to be able to relish your being, without the transport of some passion, or the gratification of some appetite.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Moderation
Fire and sword are but slow engines of destruction in comparison with the babbler.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Gossip
Allow no man to be so free with you as to praise you to your face.—Your vanity, by this means, will want its food, but at the same time your passion for esteem will be more fully gratified; men will praise you in their actions; where you now receive one compliment, you will then receive twenty civilities.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Praise, Flattery
Of all the affections which attend human life, the love of glory is the most ardent.
—Richard Steele
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