Daily Inspiration Quote by Samuel Richardson

Richardson is skewering a very specific kind of social hypocrisy: the person who treats humor like a weapon rack, not a shared game. The line pivots on a neat moral geometry. If you "can least bear" being laughed at, you’re often the one who’s "most diverted" when someone else is the target. The imbalance is the point. Laughter becomes a kind of status insurance policy: it’s safest when it lands on another body.

As a novelist of manners, Richardson understood how polite society polices itself through small, deniable cruelties. A "jest" sounds harmless, even charming, but he’s alert to its real function in a room: it tests rank, hardens pecking orders, and exposes who’s allowed to be porous. The people who can’t take a joke are rarely humorless; they’re protective. Their sensitivity is less about wit and more about control. If they can’t risk being reduced, they compensate by enjoying reductions of others.

The intent is corrective, almost diagnostic. Richardson isn’t merely praising thick skin; he’s indicting the asymmetry of empathy. He’s also warning the reader about complicity: being "diverted" can feel like innocent pleasure, but it often relies on a social victim. In a culture where reputation was fragile and public embarrassment could be reputationally fatal, the ability to "bear a jest" signaled not just confidence but a kind of moral steadiness. The subtext is modern, too: the loudest champions of "it’s just a joke" tend to mean, quietly, "not about me."