Robert Southey Quotes

The arts babblative and scribblative.

Somebody has been sitting in my chair!

How little do they see what is, who frame
Their hasty judgement upon that which seems!

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.

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

[M]ost of the appearing mirth in the world is not mirth, but art. The wounded spirit is not seen, but walks under a disguise.

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!

[A]s for covetousness, we may truly say of it, that it makes both the alpha and omega in the devil's alphabet, and that it is the first vice in corrupt nature which moves, and the last which dies.

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?

For he that is a good man, is three quarters of his way towards the being a good Christian, wheresoever he lives, or whatsoever he is called.

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

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

[N]o man's religion ever survives his morals.

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

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.