Robert Southey Quotes

No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other's worth.

Mild arch of promise! on the evening sky Thou shinest fair with many a lovely ray, Each in the other melting.

There is a magic in that little world, home; it is a mystic circle that surrounds comforts and virtues never know beyond its hallowed limits.

Cupid "the little greatest god."

It is with words as with sunbeams - the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.

Would you who judge of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of pleasure, take this rule; whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off the relish of spiritual things; in short; whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that is sin to you; however innocent it may be in itself.

By writing much, one learns to write well.

Live as long as you may, the first twenty years are the longest half of your life.

Order is the sanity of the mind, the health of the body, the peace of the city, the security of the state. As the beams to a house, as the bones to the microcosm of man, so is order to all things.

All deception in the course of life is indeed nothing else but a lie reduced to practice, and falsehood passing from words into things.

Let us depart! the universal sun Confines not to one land his blessed beams; Nor is man rooted, like a tree, whose seed, the winds on some ungenial soil have cast there, where it cannot prosper.

It has been more wittily than charitably said that hell is paved with good intentions; they have their place in heaven also.

How beautiful is night! A dewy freshness fills the silent air; No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain, Breaks the serene of heaven.

Never let a man imagine that he can pursue a good end by evil means, without sinning against his own soul. The evil effect on himself is certain.

Not where I breathe, but where I love, I live; Not where I love, but where I am, I die.

Kitten is in the animal world what the rosebud is in the garden; the one the most beautiful of all young creatures, the other the loveliest of all opening flowers.

What will not woman, gentle woman dare; when strong affection stirs her spirit up?

The loss of a friend is like that of a limb; time may heal the anguish of the wound, but the loss cannot be repaired.

Love is indestructible, Its holy flame forever burneth; From heaven it came, to heaven returneth.

The disappointed man turns his thoughts toward a state of existence where his wiser desires may be fixed with the certainty of faith; the successful man feels that the objects which he has ardently pursued fail to satisfy the cravings of an immortal spirit; the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness, that he may save his soul alive.

Few people give themselves time to be friends.

The three indispensable of genius are: understanding, feeling, and perseverance; the three things that enrich genius are: contentment of mind, the cherishing of good thoughts, and the exercise of memory

A stubborn mind conduces as little to wisdom or even to knowledge, as a stubborn temper to happiness

Whatever strengthens our local attachments is favorable both to individual and national character, our home, our birthplace, our native land. Think for a while what the virtues are which arise out of the feelings connected with these words, and if you have any intellectual eyes, you will then perceive the connection between topography and patriotism.

Live as long as you may, the first twenty years are the longest half of your life. They appear so while they are passing; they seem to have been so when we look back on them; and they take up more room in our memory than all the years that succeed them.

There are three things in speech that ought to be considered before some things are spoken--the manner, the place and the time.

They who once engage in iniquitous designs miserably deceive themselves when they think that they will go so far and no farther; one fault begets another, one crime renders another necessary; and thus they are impelled continually downward into a depth of guilt, which at the commencement of their career they would have died rather than have incurred.

How beautiful is night! A dewy freshness fills the silent air; No mist obscures; nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain, Breaks the serene of heaven: In full-orbed glory, yonder moon divine Rolls through the dark blue depths; Beneath her steady ray The desert circle spreads Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky. How beautiful is night!

Take away love, and not physical nature only, but the heart of the moral world, would be palsied.

Man hath a weary pilgrimage, As through the word he wends; On every stage, from youth to age, Still discontent attends.

There is healing in the bitter cup.

A house is never perfectly furnished for enjoyment unless there is a child in it rising three years old, and a kitten rising three weeks.

Whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that is sin to you, however, innocent it may be in itself.

There is no security in a good disposition if the support of good principles--that is to say, of religion, of Christian faith--be wanting. It may be soured by misfortune, it may be corrupted by wealth, it may be blighted by neediness, it may lose all its original brightness, if destitute of that support.

They sin who tell us Love can die: With life all other passions fly, All others are but vanity, In Heaven Ambition cannot dwell, Nor Avarice in the vaults of Hell.

Among the poor, the approach of dissolution is usually regarded with a quiet and natural composure, which it is consolatory to contemplate, and which is as far removed from the dead palsy of unbelief as it is from the delirious raptures of fanaticism. Theirs is a true, unhesitating faith, and they are willing to lay down the burden of e weary life, in the sure and certain hope of a blessed immortality.

Happy it were for us all if we bore prosperity as well and as wisely as we endure adverse fortune.

There are some readers who have never read an essay on taste; and if they take my advice they never will, for they can no more improve their taste by so doing than they could improve their appetite or digestion by studying a cookery-book.

A fastidious taste is like a squeamish appetite; the one has its origin in some disease of the mind, as the other has in some ailment of the stomach.

Faith in the hereafter is as necessary for the intellectual as the moral character; and to the man of letters, as well as to the Christian, the present forms but the slightest portion of his existence.

Without religion the highest endowments of intellect can only render the possessor more dangerous if he be ill disposed; if well disposed, only more unhappy.

That charity is bad which takes from independence its proper pride, from mendicity its salutary shame.

It is not for man to rest in absolute contentment. He is born to hopes and aspirations as the sparks fly upward, unless he has brutalized his nature and quenched the spirit of immortality which is his portion.

I have told you of the Spaniard who always put on his spectacles when about to eat cherries, that they might look bigger and more attempting. In like manner I made the most of my enjoyment s: and through I do not cast my cares away, I pack them in as little compass as I can, and carry them as conveniently as I can for myself, and never let them annoy others.

What blockheads are those wise persons, who think it necessary that a child should comprehend everything it reads.

From his brimstone bed, at break of day, A-walking the Devil is gone, To look at his little snug farm of the World, And see how his stock went on.

As sure as God is good, so surely there is no such thing as necessary evil.

Beasts, birds, and insects, even to the minutest and meanest of their kind, act with the unerring providence of instinct; man, the while, who possesses a higher faculty, abuses it, and therefore goes blundering on.

"You are old, Father William," the young man cried, "The few locks which are left you are gray; You are hale, Father William, a hearty old man,- Now tell me the reason I pray."

Happy those Who in the after-days shall live, when Time Hath spoken, and the multitude of years Taught wisdom to mankind!