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
I know of no manner of speaking so offensive as that of giving praise, and closing it with an exception.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Praise
The marriage 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.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Marriage
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
Whenever you commend, add your reasons for doing so; it is this which distinguishes the approbation of a man of sense from the flattery of sycophants and admiration of fools.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Praise
Our self-love is ever ready to revolt from our better judgment, and join the enemy within.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Self-love
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.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Speech
All a woman has to do in this world is contained within the duties of a daughter, a sister, a wife, and a mother.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Woman
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
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
That man never grows old who keeps a child in his heart.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Age, Aging
Conversation never sits easier than when we now and then discharge ourselves in a symphony of laughter; which may not improperly be called the chorus of conversation.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Laughter
Human nature is not so much depraved as to hinder us from respecting goodness in others, though we ourselves want it. We love truth too well to resist the charms of sincerity.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Humanity
There is a kind of sympathy in souls that fits them for each other; and we may be assured when we see two persons engaged in the warmths of a mutual affection, that there are certain qualities in both their minds which bear a resemblance to one another.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Sympathy
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
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
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
Extinguish vanity in the mind, and you naturally retrench the little superfluities of garniture and equipage. The blossoms will fall of themselves when the root that nourishes them is destroyed.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Vanity
Among all the diseases of the mind there is not one more epidemical or more pernicious than the love of flattery.
—Richard Steele
Zeal for the public good is the characteristic of a man of honor and a gentleman, and must take the place of pleasures, profits, and all other private gratifications.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Service, Public, Zeal
I know no evil so great as the abuse of the understanding, and yet there is no one vice more common.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Understanding
The highest point of good-breeding is to show a very nice regard to your own dignity, and with that in your own heart, to express your value for the man above you.
—Richard Steele
A wag is in the last order even of pretenders to wit and humor.—Generally he has his mind prepared to receive some occasion of merriment, but is of himself too empty to draw any out of his own thoughts, and therefore he laughs at the next thing he meets, not because it is ridiculous, but because he is under the necessity of laughing.
—Richard Steele
Inquisitive people are the funnels of conversation; they do not take anything for their own use, but merely to pass it on to others.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Curiosity
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
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
I cannot think of any character below the flatterer, except he who envies him.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Flattery
Of all mortals a critic is the silliest; for, inuring himself to examine all things, whether they are of consequence or not, he never looks upon anything but with a design of passing sentence upon it; by which means he is never a companion, but always a censer.
—Richard Steele
Topics: Critics
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
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
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: Women, Influence
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