Top 92 Southey Quotes
#1. My mom grew up in Idaho, went to Brigham Young University: they're very Molly Mormon. And my father is, like, first generation Albanian, and his parents lived in Southey and grew up in downtown Boston. My parents are complete opposites.
Eliza Dushku
#2. Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be.
(Southey's reply to Charlotte Bronte)
Robert Southey
#3. Thou shalt believe in Milton, Dryden, Pope;
Thou shalt not set up Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey;
Because the first is crazed beyond all hope,
The second drunk, the third so quaint and mouthy.
George Gordon Byron
#4. 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
Robert Southey
#5. Mild arch of promise! on the evening sky Thou shinest fair with many a lovely ray, Each in the other melting.
Robert Southey
#6. 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
#8. They sin who tell us Love can die: with Life all other passions fly, all others are but vanity.
Robert Southey
#9. Some people seem born with a head in which the thin partition that divides great wit from folly is wanting.
Robert Southey
#10. It is with words as with sunbeams - the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.
Robert Southey
#12. 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.
Robert Southey
#13. As sure as God is good, so surely there is no such thing as necessary evil.
Robert Southey
#14. Happy it were for us all if we bore prosperity as well and as wisely as we endure adverse fortune.
Robert Southey
#15. Live as long as you may, the first twenty years are the longest half of your life.
Robert Southey
#16. 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
#17. I do not cast my eyes away from my troubles. I pack them in
as little compass as I can for myself, and never let them
annoy others.
Robert Southey
#18. Our knowledge, is our power, and God our strength.
Robert Southey
#19. 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.
Robert Southey
#20. What will not woman, gentle woman dare; when strong affection stirs her spirit up?
Robert Southey
#21. To a resolute mind, wishing to do is the first step toward doing. But if we do not wish to do a thing it becomes impossible.
Robert Southey
#22. 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
#23. 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.
Robert Southey
#24. 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
#25. 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.
Robert Southey
#26. There are three things in speech that ought to be considered before some things are spoken
the manner, the place and the time.
Robert Southey
#27. All deception in the course of life is indeed nothing else but a lie reduced to practice, and falsehood passing from words into things.
Robert Southey
#28. In the days of my youth I remembered my God! And He hath not forgotten my age.
Robert Southey
#29. 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
#30. After long absence, of return / To my dear home - Oh, happiness! / To lie in blissful consciousness / Of all around: The picture there - / The books - the flower-glass filled with care / By a kind hand - And then to know, / 'Twas but to rise, and meet below / Such a heart's welcome!
Caroline Anne Southey
#31. 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
#32. 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
#34. 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
#35. 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
#36. The pulpit is a clergyman's parade; the parish is his field of active service.
Robert Southey
#37. Earth could not hold us both, nor can one heaven Contain my deadliest enemy and me.
Robert Southey
#38. 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.
Robert Southey
#39. 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."
Robert Southey
#40. 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.
Robert Southey
#41. 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.
Robert Southey
#42. 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
#43. 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!
Robert Southey
#44. Beware of those who are homeless by choice! You have no hold on human being whose affections are without a top-root!
Robert Southey
#45. Thou hast been called, O sleep! the friend of woe; But 't is the happy that have called thee so.
Robert Southey
#46. 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.
Robert Southey
#47. What blockheads are those wise persons, who think it necessary that a child should comprehend everything it reads.
Robert Southey
#48. Love is indestructible, Its holy flame forever burneth; From heaven it came, to heaven returneth.
Robert Southey
#49. 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
#50. Ay! idleness! the rich folks never fail
To find some reason why the poor deserve
Their miseries.
Robert Southey
#51. One fault begets another; one crime renders another necessary.
Robert Southey
#52. 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
#53. It has been more wittily than charitably said that hell is paved with good intentions; they have their place in heaven also.
Robert Southey
#54. In fall-orbed glory, yonder moon Divine Rolls through the dark-blue depths.
Robert Southey
#55. 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.
Robert Southey
#56. Take away love, and not physical nature only, but the heart of the moral world, would be palsied.
Robert Southey
#58. Happy those
Who in the after-days shall live, when Time
Hath spoken, and the multitude of years
Taught wisdom to mankind!
Robert Southey
#59. A wise judge, by the craft of the law, was never seduced from its purpose.
Robert Southey
#60. Not where I breathe, but where I love, I live; Not where I love, but where I am, I die.
Robert Southey
#61. 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.
Robert Southey
#62. 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?
Robert Southey
#63. Ye who dwell at home,
Ye do not know the terrors of the main.
Robert Southey
#64. A stubborn mind conduces as little to wisdom or even to knowledge, as a stubborn temper to happiness
Robert Southey
#65. 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
#66. It is not for man to rest in absolute contentment.
Robert Southey
#67. That charity is bad which takes from independence its proper pride, from mendicity its salutary shame.
Robert Southey
#68. 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
#69. 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.
Robert Southey
#71. 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.
Robert Southey
#72. 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
#73. Affliction is not sent in vain, young man, from that good God, who chastens whom he loves.
Robert Southey
#74. 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
#75. 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
#76. 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
#78. 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
#79. How little do they see what is, who frame their hasty judgments upon that which seems.
Robert Southey
#80. Three things a wise man will not trust, The wind, the sunshine of an April day, And woman's plighted faith.
Robert Southey
#81. How happily, how happily, the flowers die away! / Oh! Could we but return to earth as easily as they.
Caroline Anne Southey
#82. Man hath a weary pilgrimage,
As through the word he wends;
On every stage, from youth to age,
Still discontent attends.
Robert Southey
#83. Where Washington hath left His awful memory A light for after times!
Robert Southey
#85. 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.
Robert Southey
#86. Give me a room whose every nook is dedicated to a book.
Robert Southey
#87. 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
#89. 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
#90. 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.
Robert Southey
#91. For society, of all places I have ever been, Norwich is the best.
Robert Southey
#92. 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
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