Robert Southey Quotes

83 Sourced Quotes

If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams—the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.

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

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

Robert Southey
Order is the sanity of the mind, the health of the body, the peace of the city, the security of the state. Like beams in a house or bones to a body, so is order to all things.

Robert Southey
What will not woman, gentle woman dare,
When strong affection stirs her spirit up?

Robert Southey
Earth could not hold us both, nor can one heaven Contain my deadliest enemy and me.

Robert Southey
Little, indeed, does it concern us in this our mortal stage, to inquire whence the spirit hath come; but of what infinite concern is the consideration whither it is going. Surely such consideration demands the study of a life.

Robert Southey
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.

Robert Southey
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.

Robert Southey
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.

Robert Southey
The pulpit is a clergyman's parade; the parish is his field of active service.

Robert Southey
A man may be cheerful and contented in celibacy, but I do not think he can ever be happy; it is an unnatural state, and the best feelings of his nature are never called into action.

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

Robert Southey
There is another world for all that live and move-a better one!

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

Robert Southey
Easier were it To hurl the rooted mountain from its base, Than force the yoke of slavery upon men Determin'd to be free.

Robert Southey
And when my own Mark Antony
Against young Caesar strove,
And Rome's whole world was set in arms,
The cause was,--all for love.

Robert Southey
Go, little Book! From this my solitude
I cast thee on the Waters,--go thy ways:
And if, as I believe, thy vein be good,
The World will find thee after many days.
Be it with thee according to thy worth:
Go, little Book; in faith I send thee forth.

Robert Southey
From its fountains In the mountains, Its rills and its gills; Through moss and through brake, It runs and it creeps For awhile till it sleeps In its own little Lake. And thence at departing, Awakening and starting, It runs through the reeds And away it proceeds, Through meadow and glade, In sun and in shade, And through the wood-shelter, Among crags in its flurry, Helter-skelter, Hurry-scurry.

Robert Southey
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.

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

Robert Southey
Ye who dwell at home,
Ye do not know the terrors of the main.

Robert Southey
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.

Robert Southey
Thou hast been called, O sleep! the friend of woe;
But 'tis the happy that have called thee so.

Robert Southey
He came to ask what he had found,
That was so large, and smooth, and round.

Robert Southey
Till the vessel strikes with a shivering shock,
Oh Christ! It is the Inchcape Rock!

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

Robert Southey
The march of intellect is proceeding at quick time; and if its progress be not accompanied by a corresponding improvement in morals and religion, the faster it proceeds, with the more violence will you be hurried down the road to ruin.

Robert Southey
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.

Robert Southey
"And everybody praised the Duke
Who this great fight did win."
"But what good came of it at last?"
Quoth little Peterkin.
"Why, that I cannot tell," said he,
"But 'twas a famous victory."

Robert Southey