Robert Southey Quotes

It is idleness that creates impossibilities; and where men care not to do a thing, they shelter themselves under a persuasion that it cannot be done.

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.

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

Till the vessel strikes with a shivering shock,
“Oh Christ! It is the Inchcape Rock!”

Guilt upon the conscience, like rust upon iron, both defiles and consumes it, by degrees gnawing and creeping into it, as that does; till at length it has eat out the very heart and substance of the metal.

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

The covetous person lives as if the world were made altogether for him, and not he for the world.

[T]hough reason is not to be relied upon, as a guide universally sufficient to direct us what to do; yet it is generally to be relied upon and obeyed, where it tells us what we are not to do.

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

Every body is a critic.

The arts babblative and scribblative.

Anger [is], according to some, a transient hatred, or at least very like it.

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.

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?

If you would be pungent, be brief ; for it is with words as with sunbeams—the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.