Robert Southey Quotes

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."

A kitten is in the animal world what a rosebud is in the garden.

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

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

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

By writing much, one learns to write well.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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!

Man hath a weary pilgrimage, As through the word he wends;

On every stage, from youth to age, Still discontent attends.

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.

Ambition is an idol, on whose wings great minds are carried only to extreme;

to be sublimely great or to be nothing.

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 healing in the bitter cup.

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.

Some voluntary castaways there will always be, whom no fostering kindness and no parental care can preserve from self-destruction; but if any are lost for want of care and culture, there is a sin of omission in the society to which they belong.

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

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.

Affliction is not sent in vain, young man, from that good God, who chastens whom he loves.

The grave is but the threshold of eternity.

What a world were this, how unendurable its weight, If they whom death hath sundered, did not meet again!

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.

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

Whoever has tasted the breath of morning knows that the most invigorating and most delightful hours of then day are commonly spent in bed; though it is the evident intention of nature that we should enjoy and profit by them.

She comes majestic with her swelling sails, The gallant Ship: along her watery way, Homeward she drives before the favouring gales; Now flirting at their length the streamers play, And now they ripple with the ruffling breeze.

"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."

I have heard a good story of Charles Fox.

When his house was on fire, he found all efforts to save it useless, and, being a good draughtsman, he went up to the next hill to make a drawing of the fire,--the best instance of philosophy I ever heard of.

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.

One fault begets another; one crime renders another necessary.

It is not for man to rest in absolute contentment.

Cold is thy hopeless heart, even as charity.

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.

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.

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.

The history of any private family, however humble, could it be fully related for five or six generations, would illustrate the state and progress of society better than the most elaborate dissertation.

How little do they see what is, who frame their hasty judgments upon that which seems.

The grave Is but the threshold of eternity.