Daily Inspiration Quote by Samuel Richardson

Richardson smuggles a moral argument into a devotional costume. By calling kindness the most "God-like" trait in human nature, he flatters the reader into decency: doing good stops being mere etiquette or charity and becomes a kind of spiritual cosplay, a way to participate in divinity without needing sainthood. The line works because it’s both aspirational and disciplinary. If benevolence is our closest approach to God, then cruelty and indifference aren’t just social failures; they’re apostasies of character.

As a novelist of sensibility, Richardson isn’t speaking from the pulpit so much as from the parlor. His books trained readers to treat moral feeling as a public performance with private stakes: tears, sympathy, restraint, duty. "Disposition" matters here. He’s not praising one-off good deeds (which can be transactional, even self-serving); he’s sanctifying a settled habit of care, a temperament that persists when no one is watching and no reward is guaranteed. That emphasis aligns with the 18th-century rise of middle-class virtue, when moral credibility was increasingly earned through behavior rather than birthright.

The subtext has a sharper edge. By framing goodness as "God-like", Richardson also makes it legible across class lines: anyone can approximate the divine through conduct, even if they can’t access power. Yet he keeps it safely social. "Our fellow-creatures" sets the horizon: do good, yes, but within the human community, where sympathy can be cultivated, judged, and narrated. In Richardson’s world, virtue is not just felt; it’s meant to be seen, believed, and copied.