Quotes from Robert South

An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise.

Passion is the drunkenness of the mind.

It is idleness that creates impossibilities; and where people don't care to do anything, they shelter themselves under a permission that it cannot be done.

A man's life is an appendix to his heart.

Let a man be but in earnest in praying against a temptation as the tempter is in pressing it, and he needs not proceed by a surer measure.

Folly enlarges men's desires while it lessens their capacities.

Speech was given to the ordinary sort of men, whereby to communicate their mind; but to wise men, whereby to conceal it.

No man's religion ever survives his morals.

A true friend is the gift of God, and He only who made hearts can unite them.

God afflicts with the mind of a father, and kills for no other purpose but that he may raise again.

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.

Novelty is the great parent of pleasure.

Abstinence is the great strengthener and clearer of reason.

Action is the highest perfection and drawing forth of the utmost power, vigor, and activity of man's nature.

Innocence is like polished armor; it adorns and defends.

Loquacity storms the ear, but modesty takes the heart.

Anger is a transient hatred or at least very like it.

God expects from men something more than at such times, and that it were much to be wished for the credit of their religion as well as the satisfaction of their conscience that their Easter devotions would in some measure come up to their Easter dress.

The grateful person, being still the most severe exacter of himself, not only confesses, but proclaims, his debts.

The seven wise men of Greece, so famous for their wisdom all the world over, acquired all that fame, each of them, by a single sentence consisting of two or three words.

It is the work of fancy to enlarge, but of judgment to shorten and contract and therefore this must be as far above the other as judgment is a greater and nobler faculty than fancy or imagination.

Action is the highest perfection and drawing forth of the utmost power, vigor, and activity of man's nature.

Defeat should never be a source of discouragement, but rather a fresh stimulus.

Most of the appearance of mirth in the world is not mirth, it is art. The wounded spirit is not seen, but walks under a disguise.