Quotes from Robert Southey

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

Not where I breathe, but where I love, I live; Not where I love, but where I am, I die.

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

They sin who tell us Love can die: With life all other passions fly, All others are but vanity, In Heaven Ambition cannot dwell, Nor Avarice in the vaults of Hell.

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.

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.

And when my own Mark Antony Against young Caesar strove, And Rome's whole world was set in arms, The cause was,--all for love.

They sin who tell us Love can die: with Life all other passions fly, all others are but vanity.

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.

How little do they see what is, who frame their hasty judgments upon that which seems.

It is not for man to rest in absolute contentment.

Is but the threshold of eternity.

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.

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

Happy those Who in the after-days shall live, when Time Hath spoken, and the multitude of years Taught wisdom to mankind!

A man may be cheerful and contented in celibacy, but I do not think he can ever be happy; it is an unnatural state, and the best feelings of his nature are never called into action.

Never let a man imagine that he can pursue a good end by evil means, without sinning against his own soul. The evil effect on himself is certain.

Man hath a weary pilgrimage, As through the word he wends; On every stage, from youth to age, Still discontent attends.

Go to any sea-port town and you will see that the Sea-captain who has retired upon his well-earned savings, sets up a weather-cock in full view from his windows, and watches the variations of the wind as duly as when he was at sea, though no longer with the same anxiety.

The grave is but the threshold of eternity. What a world were this, how unendurable its weight, If they whom death hath sundered, did not meet again!

My name is Death: the last best friend am I.

My days among the dead are passed; 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.

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.

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