Best 95 quotes of Robert Southey on MyQuotes

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

By writing much, one learns to write well.

Cold is thy hopeless heart, even as charity.

Cupid "the little greatest god.

Curses are like young chickens, theyalways come home to roost.

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

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

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.

Few people give themselves time to be friends.

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.

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.

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.

Give me a room whose every nook is dedicated to a book.

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.

Happy it were for us all if we bore prosperity as well and as wisely as we endure adverse fortune.

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!

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

It behooves us always to bear in mind, that while actions are always to be judged by the immutable standard of right and wrong, the judgments which we pass upon men must be qualified by considerations of age, country, station, and other accidental circumstances; and it will then be found that he who is most charitable in his judgment is generally the least unjust.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Live as long as you may, the first twenty years are the longest half of your life. They appear so while they are passing; they seem to have been so when we look back on them; and they take up more room in our memory than all the years that succeed them.

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

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

Mild arch of promise! on the evening sky Thou shinest fair with many a lovely ray, Each in the other melting.

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.

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.