Top 80 Robert Southey Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “It has been more wittily than charitably said that hell is paved with good intentions; they have their place in heaven also.”

— Robert Southey

52. “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

53. “If you would be pungent, be brief.”

— Robert Southey

54. “In fall-orbed glory, yonder moon Divine Rolls through the dark-blue depths.”

— Robert Southey

55. “Where Washington hath left His awful memory A light for after times!”

— Robert Southey

56. “Cold is thy hopeless heart, even as charity.”

— Robert Southey

57. “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

58. “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

59. “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

60. “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

61. “That charity is bad which takes from independence its proper pride, from mendicity its salutary shame.”

— Robert Southey

62. “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

63. “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

64. “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

65. “There was a time when I believed in the persuadability of man, and had the mania of man-mending. Experience has taught me better. The ablest physician can do little in the great lazar-house of society. He acts the wisest part who retires from the contagion.”

— Robert Southey

66. “Some people seem born with a head in which the thin partition that divides great wit from folly is wanting.”

— Robert Southey

67. “The pulpit is a clergyman’s parade; the parish is his field of active service.”

— Robert Southey

68. “The laws are with us, and God on our side.”

— Robert Southey

69. “What blockheads are those wise persons, who think it necessary that a child should comprehend everything it reads.”

— Robert Southey

70. “There is another world for all that live and move-a better one!”

— Robert Southey

71. “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

72. “Few people give themselves time to be friends.”

— Robert Southey

73. “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

74. “Affliction is not sent in vain, young man, from that good God, who chastens whom he loves.”

— Robert Southey

75. “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

76. “Well,” said he, as he left the ELEPHANT, “I have fought contrary to orders, and I shall perhaps be hanged. Never mind: let them!”

— Robert Southey

77. “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

78. “Thou hast been called, O sleep! the friend of woe; But ’t is the happy that have called thee so.”

— Robert Southey

79. “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

80. “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

81. “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

82. “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

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

— Robert Southey

84. “For society, of all places I have ever been, Norwich is the best.”

— Robert Southey

85. “It is not for man to rest in absolute contentment.”

— Robert Southey

86. “The field of glory,” said he, “is a large one, and was never more open to any one than at this moment to you. Rome would throw open her gates and receive you as her deliverer; and the pope would owe his restoration to a heretic.”

— Robert Southey