Robert Southey Quotes

Robert Southey's verses blend nature, history and a dash of dark humor.

61 quotes

1. Cold is thy heart and as frozen as Charity!

2. 'You are old, Father William.' the young man cried, 'The few locks which are left you are grey; You are hale, Father William-a hearty old man: Now tell me the reason, I pray.'

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

4. 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!

5. And then they knew the perilous Rock, And blest the Abbot of Aberbrothok.

6. Till the vessel strikes with a shivering shock, 'Oh Christ! It is the Inchcape Rock!'

7. Will ye believe The wonders of the ocean? how its shoals Sprang from the wave, like flashing light; .. took wing, And, twinkling with a silver glitterance, Flew through the air and sunshine? yet were they To sight less wondrous than the tribe who swam, Following like fowlers, with uplifted eye, Their falling quarry: .. language cannot paint Their splendid tints! though in blue ocean seen, Blue, darkly, deeply, beautifully blue, In all its rich variety of shades, Suffus'd with glowing gold.

8. 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.

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

10. The laws are with us, and God on our side.

11. 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.

12. Yet leaving here a name, I trust, That will not perish in the dust.

13. Agreed to differ.

14. The Satanic school.

15. The arts babblative and scribblative.

16. The march of intellect.

17. And then she went to the porridge of the Little, Small, Wee Bear, and tasted that; and that was neither too hot nor too cold, but just right.

18. Somebody has been sitting in my chair!

19. It was a summer evening, Old Kaspar's work was done, And he before his cottage door Was sitting in the sun, And by him sported on the green His little grandchild Wilhelmine.

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

21. ''Tis some poor fellow's skull,' said he, 'Who fell in the great victory.'

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

23. '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.'

24. 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.

25. How, then, was the Devil dressed? Oh! he was in his Sunday's best; His coat was red, and his breeches were blue, And there was a hole where his tail came through.

26. 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.

27. Thou hast confessions to listen, And bells to christen, And altars and dolls to dress; And fools to coax, And sinners to hoax, And beads and bones to bless; And great pardons to sell For those who pay well, And small ones for those who pay less.

28. At this good news, so great The Devil's pleasure grew, That, with a joyful swish, he rent The hole where his tail came through.

29. '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.'

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

31. They sin who tell us love can die; With life all other passions fly, All others are but vanity.

32. 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?

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

34. How does the water Come down at Lodore?

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

36. From its fountains In the mountains, Its rills and its gills; Through moss and through brake, It runs and it creeps For a while, till it sleeps In its own little lake.

37. 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-skurry.

38. Rising and leaping, Sinking and creeping, Swelling and sweeping, Showering and springing, Flying and flinging, Writhing and ringing, Eddying and whisking, Spouting and frisking, Turning and twisting, Around and around With endless rebound: Smiting and fighting, A sight to delight in; Confounding, astounding, Dizzying and deafening the ear with its sound.

39. 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.

40. Wild dreams! but such As Plato lov'd; such as with holy zeal Our Milton worshipp'd. Blessed hopes! awhile From man with-held, even to the latter days When Christ shall come, and all things be fulfill'd.

41. Ye vales and hills, whose beauty hither drew The poet's steps, and fixed him here, on you His eyes have closed; and ye, loved books, no more Shall Southey feed upon your precious lore, To works that ne'er shall forfeit their renown, Adding immortal labors of his own; Whether he traced historic truth with zeal For the state's guidance, or the church's weal; Or Fancy, disciplined by studious Art, Informed his pen, or Wisdom of the heart Or Judgments sanctioned in the patriot's mind By reverence for the rights of all mankind. Large were his aims, yet in no human breast Could private feelings find a holier nest. His joys, his griefs, have vanished like a cloud From Skiddaw's top, but he to heaven was vowed Through a life long and pure, and steadfast faith Calmed in his soul the fear of change and death.

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

43. “No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each others worth.”

44. 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.

45. Order is the sanity of the mind, the health of the body, the peace of the city, the security of the state. As the beams to a house, as the bones to the microcosm of man, so is order to all things.

46. 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.

47. Love is indestructible. It's holy flame forever burneth; from Heaven it came, to Heaven returneth.

48. 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.

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

50. 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.

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

52. 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.

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

54. 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.

55. If you would be pungent, be brief.

56. 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.

57. One fault begets another; one crime renders another necessary.

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

59. Cold is thy hopeless heart, even as charity.

60. 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.

61. There are three things in speech that ought to be considered before some things are spoken--the manner, the place and the time.