Robert Southey Quotes

Beware of those who are homeless by choice! You have no hold on human being whose affections are without a top-root!

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.

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.

Oh, when a mother meets on high The babe she lost in infancy, Hath she not then for pains and fears, The day of woe, the watchful night, For all her sorrow, all her tears, An over-payment of delight?

In the days of my youth I remembered my God! And He hath not forgotten my age.

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

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

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!

My days among the dead are passed; 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.

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?

I cannot believe in an eternity of hell. I hope God will forgive me if I err; but in this matter I cannot say, "Lord help my unbelief."

In fall-orbed glory, yonder moon Divine Rolls through the dark-blue depths.

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.

Be thankful that your lot has fallen on times when, though there may be many evil tongues and exasperated spirits, there are none who have fire and fagot at command.

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.

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

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.

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

Three things a wise man will not trust, The wind, the sunshine of an April day, And woman's plighted faith.

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

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

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

Our restlessness in this world seems to indicate that we are intended for a better. We have all of us a longing after happiness; and surely the Creator will gratify all the natural desires he has implanted in us.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Ay! idleness! the rich folks never fail
To find some reason why the poor deserve
Their miseries.

It is not for man to rest in absolute contentment.

The true one of youth's love, proving a faithful helpmate in those years when the dream of life is over, and we live in its realities.

War, even in the best state of an army, with all the alleviations of courtesy and honor, with all the correctives of morality and religion, is nevertheless so great an evil, that to engage in it without a clear necessity is a crime of the blackest dye. When the necessity is clear, it then becomes a crime to shrink from it.

Thou hast been called, O sleep! the friend of woe; But 't is the happy that have called thee so.

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.

They sin who tell us Love can die: with Life all other passions fly, all others are but vanity.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Cold is thy hopeless heart, even as charity.

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

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.

O Reader! hast thou eer stood to see The Holly-tree? The eye that contemplates it well perceies Its glossy leaes Ordered by an Intelligence so wise As might confound the Atheist's sophistries.

For a young and presumptuous poet a disposition to write satires is one of the most dangerous he can encourage. It tempts him to personalities, which are not always forgiven after he has repented and become ashamed of them.

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.

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.

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

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

One fault begets another; one crime renders another necessary.

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.

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.

Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be.

(Southey's reply to Charlotte Bronte)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

My notions of life are much the same as they are about traveling; there is a good deal of amusement on the road; but, after all, one wants to be at rest.

A wise judge, by the craft of the law, was never seduced from its purpose.

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."