Daily Inspiration Quote by Samuel Richardson

Pride usually arrives in moral literature as a villain with good posture, but Richardson gives it a narrow, almost legal exemption: you may feel proud only of the work it takes not to stoop. The line is calibrated to rescue self-regard from vanity by tethering it to restraint. It is not “be proud of what you’ve done,” but “be proud of what you refused to do,” a subtle shift that makes virtue less about performance than about boundary-setting.

That’s classic Richardson, the novelist of reputations, letters, and social traps. In an 18th-century world where “honor” could mean little more than what others could be persuaded to believe, he presses honor inward. The pardonable pride isn’t the swagger of status; it’s the quiet spine that won’t bend when bending would be profitable. Subtext: society will constantly offer you incentives to compromise - money, romance, advancement, acceptance - and it will often dress those incentives up as pragmatism. Richardson counters with a moral minimalism: the highest claim you can make about yourself is negative, a refusal.

The sentence also smuggles in a little psychological realism. People need a motive to stay clean when no one is watching. By “pardoning” this pride, he licenses a form of self-respect as an internal reward system. You don’t behave because you’re saintly; you behave because you’ve built an identity you don’t want to betray. In a culture obsessed with appearances, Richardson argues that the only pride worth keeping is the kind that makes dishonor feel beneath you.