Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Richard Steele (Irish Writer, Journalist)

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

The fool within himself is the object of pity, until he is flattered.
Richard Steele
Topics: Foolishness, Fools

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

To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.
Richard Steele
Topics: Beauty

It is wonderful that so many shall entertain those with whom they converse by giving them the history of their pains and aches; and imagine such narrations their quota of the conversation. This is, of all other, the meanest help to discourse, and a man must not think at all, or think himself very insignifificant when he finds an account of his headache answered by another’s asking what is the news in the last mail.
Richard Steele
Topics: Conversation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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: Immortality, Fame

An inquisitive man is a creature naturally very vacant of thought itself, and therefore forced to apply to foreign assistance.
Richard Steele

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: Flattery, Praise

It is to be noted that when any part of this paper appears dull there is a design in it.
Richard Steele
Topics: Design

Vanity makes men ridiculous, pride odious, and ambition terrible.
Richard Steele
Topics: Vanity

A healthy old fellow, who is not a fool, is the happiest creature living.
Richard Steele
Topics: Age, Aging

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

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

A true and genuine impudence is ever the effect of ignorance, without the least sense of it.
Richard Steele

In thee oppressors soothe their angry brow; in thee, th’ oppress’d forget tyrannic pow’r; in thee, the wretch condemn’d is equal to his judge; and the sad lover to his cruel fair; nay, all the shining glories men pursue, when thou art wanted, are but empty noise.
Richard Steele
Topics: Sleep

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

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

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

A little in drink, but at all times your faithful husband.
Richard Steele
Topics: Husbands, Marriage

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

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.
Richard Steele
Topics: Conversation

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

A favor well bestowed is almost as great an honor to him who confers it as to him who receives it.
Richard Steele

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

Nothing can atone for the lack of modesty; without which beauty is ungraceful and wit detestable.
Richard Steele
Topics: Modesty, Humility

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