Robert Southey Quotes

83 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

Robert Southey
And as, when all the summer trees are seen So bright and green, The Holly leaes a sober hue display Less bright than they, But when the bare and wintry woods we see, What then so cheerful as the Holly-tree?

Robert Southey
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.

Robert Southey
The solitary Bee Whose buzzing was the only sound of life, Flew there on restless wing, Seeking in vain one blossom where to fix.

Robert Southey
A good man and a wise man may at times be angry with the world, at times grieved for it; but be sure no man was ever discontented with the world who did his duty in it.

Robert Southey
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.

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

Robert Southey
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.

Robert Southey
I can remember, with unsteady feet,
Tottering from room to room, and finding pleasure
In flowers, and toys, and sweetmeats, things which long
Have lost their power to please; which when I see them,
Raise only now a melancholy wish
I were the little trifler once again,
Who could be pleas'd so lightly.

Robert Southey
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.

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

Robert Southey
In my days of youth, I remembered my God,
And he hath not forgotten my age.

Robert Southey
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.

Robert Southey
My days among the Dead are past;
Around me I behold,
Where'er these casual eyes are cast,
The mighty minds of old;
My never-failing friends are they,
With whom I converse day by day.

Robert Southey
And so never ending, but always descending,
Sounds and motions forever and ever are blending
All at once and all o'er, with a mighty uproar, —
And this way the water comes down at Lodore.

Robert Southey
And then they knew the perilous rock,
And blessed the Abbot of Aberbrothok.

Robert Southey
He passed a cottage with a double coach-house,
A cottage of gentility;
And he owned with a grin
That his favorite sin
Is pride that apes humility.

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

Robert Southey
Show me a man who cares no more for one place than another, and I will show you in that same person one who loves nothing but himself. Beware of those who are homeless by choice.

Robert Southey
"Great news! bloody news!" cried a newsman;
The Devil said, "Stop, let me see!"
"Great news? bloody news?" thought the Devil;
"The bloodier the better for me."

Robert Southey
And last of all an Admiral came,
A terrible man with a terrible name,—
A name which you all know by sight very well,
But which no one can speak, and no one can spell.

Robert Southey
Where Washington hath left
His awful memory
A light for after times!

Robert Southey
So I told them in rhyme,
For of rhymes I had store.

Robert Southey
But what they fought each other for
I could not well make out.

Robert Southey
They sin who tell us love can die;
With life all other passions fly,
All others are but vanity.
.....
Love is indestructible,
Its holy flame forever burneth;
From heaven it came, to heaven returneth.
.....
It soweth here with toil and care,
But the harvest-time of love is there.

Robert Southey
Curses are like young chickens, they always come home to roost.

Robert Southey
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.

Robert Southey