Robert Southey

“ The sight was tremendous and awfully grand; the large fields of ice, raising themselves out of the water, striking against each other, and plunging into the deep, with a violence not to be described, and a noise like the discharge of innumerable batteries of heavy guns. The darkness of the night, the roaring of the wind and sea, and the dashing of the waves and ice against the rocks, filled the travellers with sensations of awe and horror, so as almost to deprive them of the power of utterance. ”

“ In fine, of all this matter there ought to be formed a blue powder, and from this powder when it is excited by heat, there sprouts the stem, leaves, and flowers, in one word the whole apparition of the plant rises out of its ashes. As soon as the heat ceases, the whole spectacle disappears, and the whole matter becomes deranged, and precipitates itself to the bottom of the vessel to form there a new chaos. The return of heat always resuscitates this vegetable Phœnix which lies hid in its ashes; and as the presence of heat gives it life, its absence causes its death. ”

“ The Devil is so slovenly, so melancholick, and so much an enemy to things neat, chearful, and clear, that when Christ entered into the region of Genezaret, St. Matthew recounteth how certain Devils met him in dead carcases which they had caught out of their graves, crying and saying, Jesus, thou son of David, what hast thou to do with us, that thou art come before hand to torment us? we pray thee, that if thou be to drive us out of this place where we are, thou wilt let us enter into that herd of swine which is yonder. ”

“ Do good with pain, the pleasure in't you find,
The pain's soon past, the good remains behind:
Do ill with pleasure, this y'ave for your pains,
The pleasure passes soon, the ill remains.
To a lady too confident of her innocence, he says,
Madam, that you are innocent I know,
But the world wants innocence to think you so.
Here is the germ of a well-known epigram.
He says in the epistle dedicatory to his noble friends, "There is none prints more, nor publishes less than I, for I print only for myself and private friends." ”

“ A mountain opens and discovers the palace of the new Jerusalem, where Faith, the Psyche of this Cupid, is welcomed with hymns as mistress. No person is to be seen there; she gives Free Will a candle to look about for somebody; Cupid blows it out, and tells her that she shall yet enjoy that palace and his company; that all the nations of the earth, yea, Jew, Gentile, and her sisters, shall one day serve her, and that she shall have bread and wine for food, if she will only love him, and never seek to see him, for he will not be seen. ”

“ If you had turned your eyes in another direction, you would have discovered a grey-headed father and his two daughters, all down upon their knees together among the leaves and dirt, crying upon God to have mercy upon their poor souls. I could have led you from thence a little way along a gradual ascent to a spot highly favoured of Heaven, where was a tent filled with happy souls to the number of fourteen or fifteen, who had either been assured of God's pardoning mercy, had been more fully renewed in love, or had received some peculiar comfort that day. ”

“ At the roots of the mountains they dig great cellars and grottos, and strike a hole about a foot square, ten or twelve feet into the hill, which all the summer long blows a fresh air into the cellar, so that the wine in those cellars drinks almost as cold as if it were in ice. ”

“ You, O Mother of God, are the spiritual Paradise of the second Adam; the delicate cabinet of that divine marriage which was made betwixt the two natures; the great hall wherein was celebrated the world's general reconciliation; you are the nuptial bed of the eternal word ”

“ Eclipses, therefore, of the sun, occasioned by the interposition of the moon, and of the moon, occasioned by the interposition of the earth, are not so much the tokens of the deaths which are to follow, as they are the causes." He then proceeds to shew that comets are the tokens which are sent to these tender and delicate compounds, and concludes with a compliment to that tender and delicate compound Philip II. Of this sagacious distinction between eclipses and comets he is not a little proud. ”

“ They that decke and adorne their daughters are like those that put dry wood to the fire to the end it may burne the better, for such women kindle the fire of luxury in the hearts of men: as Sampson's foxes fired the Philistines' corne, so these women they have fire in their faces, and in their gestures and actions, their glances and wanton words, by which they consume the goods of men. ”

“ The good father Ely, of happy memory, was travelling on that day when the Sanctuary was destroyed, and he heard a voice from heaven saving, the holy of holies,.. the house of the sanctuary is going to destruction; and at that Ely thought all the world would perish. But he past on, and found the sons of men tilling the earth and sowing their seed, and he said unto them, The most high God is incensed against his people, and will destroy his holy habitation and reduce his children to captivity, under the yoke of the idolaters, and yet behold ye are taking thought for this temporal life! ”

“ Alas! the human being is more easily weaned from the habit of commanding than from that of abject obedience. The slave loses his soul when he loses his master: even as the dog that has lost himself in the street, howls and whines till he has found the house again, where he had been kicked and cudgelled, and half-starved to boot. ”

“ When the Duke of Burgundy beseiged Calais, in 1436, he invented the notable project of blocking up the harbour with stone-ships, and sunk six vessels filled with immense stones which were well worked together, and cramped with lead. The experiment failed for this reason, that the Duke had forgotten to take the tides into his calculation; so at low water the stone-ships were left dry, and the people of Calais, men and women alike, amused themselves with pulling them to pieces, and hauling away the wood for fuel, to the great astonishment, the historian adds, of the Duke and his Admirals. ”

“ This rock is in the desart where the Ark was made at the first, between two mountains, where Moses and Aaron lie buried. And in the night time a cloud, much like fire, covered the place, even as it did of old; the glory of God can never be away from the name of God. ”

“ But this I know, that to be thought a man of consequence by his contemporaries, to be admitted into the society of his superiors in artificial rank, to excite the admiration of Lords, to live in splendor and sensual luxury, have been the objects of his habitual wishes. A flash of lightning has turned at once the polarity of the compass needle: and so, perhaps, now and then, but as rarely, a violent motive may revolutionize a man's opinions and professions. ”

“ For these here, they are chiefly in praise of worthy persons, of which none ever had a more plentiful supply than I, having been always conversant with the best and worthiest in all places where I came; and amongst the rest with ladies, in whose conversation, as in an academy of virtue, I learnt nothing but goodness, saw nothing but nobleness, and one might as well be drunk in crystal fountain, as have any evil thought whilst they were in their company, which I shall gladly always remember as the happiest and innocentest part of all my life. ”

“ Egotism.
It is hard and uncandid to censure the great reformers in philosophy and religion for their egotism and boastfulness. It is scarcely possible for a man to meet with continued personal abuse on account of his superior talents without associating more and more the sense of the value of his discoveries or detections with his own person. The necessity of repelling unjust contempt, forces the most modest man into a feeling of pride and self-consciousness. How can a tall man help thinking of his size, when dwarfs are constantly standing on tiptoe beside him? ”

“ You are the well-fenced orchard, the fruitful border, the fair and delicate garden of sweet flowers, embalming the earth and air with their odoriferous fragrance, yet shut up and secured from any enemy's entrance and irruption; you are the holy fountain, sealed with the signet of the most sacred Trinity, from whence the happy waters of life inflow upon the whole universe ”

“ James I. has often been ridiculed for his Demonologie, but with great injustice, because he only erred in common with the age, and because he had not only the sagacity at last to discover his error, but the honesty to confess it. ”

“ There is observable among the many, a false and bastard sensibility, prompting them to remove those evils and those alone, which disturb their enjoyments by being present to their senses. Other miseries, though equally certain and far more terrible, they not only do not endeavour to remedy; they support them, they fatten on them. Provided the dunghill be not before their parlour-window, they are well content to know that it exists, and that it is the hot bed of their luxuries. ”

“ All the Earth doth worship thee, the Father Seraphical.
To thee all Minorites cry aloud, the Heavens and all the corded families.
To thee the Seraphic Martyrs and Confessors continually do cry,
Holy, holy, holy Standard-bearer of the Lord God of Sabaoth!
Heaven and Earth are full of the miracles of thy grace. ”

“ It is curious that an institution should exist in the Papal territories, founded upon an anti-clerical feeling, not less inveterate than that of the bigotted Quakers, who always say steeple-house instead of church. The little town of Norcia had the privilege of making its own laws and chasing its own magistrates, and so jealous were the people of all priests, that in order to prevent the possibility of any one obtaining authority among them, one of their laws was, that all men who could read and write, should be incapable of bearing a share in their government. ”

“ Whereupon not knowing what the people had seen, I turned myself unto them, and called them unto the altar, and told them plainly, that whilst I was in my memento prayers and meditations, a mouse had carried away the sacrament, and that I knew not what to do, unless they would help me to find it out again. The people called a priest who was at hand, who presently brought in more of his coat: and as if their god had by this been eaten up, they presently prepared to find out the thief, as if they would eat up the mouse that had so assaulted and abused their god. ”

“ And what is more wonderful, and yet may also be experimented every day is, that if any of the ashes from the holy kitchen are taken for any ordinary uses, such as to make a lye for washing, or to scour a candlestick or to clean plate, it not only is of no use for such purposes, but stains, spots, and spoils whatever it is applied to, as if God had chosen that which he has set apart, and ordained for the signification of some great mystery, should be of no other use, neither serve for any other purpose. ”

“ The very knowledge of the opinions and customs of so considerable a part of mankind as the Jews now are, and especially have been heretofore, is valuable both for pleasure and use. It is a very good piece of history, and that of the best kind, viz. of Human Nature, and of that part of it, which is most different from us, and commonly the least known to us.—And indeed the principal advantage which is to be made by the wiser sort of men of most writings, is rather to see what men think and are, than to be informed of the natures and truth of things ”

“ The tear started into Gelon's eye, and he prest the hand of his friend, while Musaello half-suppressing, half-indulging a similar sense Of shame, sportively exclaimed—"Hang it, Gelon! somehow or other these philosopher fellows always have the better of us wits, in the long run!" ”

“ Every body knows where the seat of honour is, and I have seen the pineal gland handed round upon a saucer at an anatomical lecture, as the seat of the soul:—"Seat of the soul, gentlemen; that is supposed to be the seat of the soul." ”

“ In one place you would have seen a poor sinner leaning with his head against a tree, with tears running from his eyes like drops of rain upon the ground, while some went to him, and pointed to him the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world. ”

“ Nay,by making us tremblingly alive to trifling misfortunes, it frequently precludes it, and induces effeminate and cowardly selfishness. Our own sorrows, like the princes of Hell in Milton's Pandaemonium, sit enthroned "bulky and vast:" while the miseries of our fellow-creatures dwindle into pigmy forms, and are crowded, an innumerable multitude! into some dark corner of the heart. There is one criterion, by which we may always distinguish benevolence from mere sensibility. Benevolence impels to action, and is accompanied by self-denial." ”

“ It would have proved a striking part of a Vision presented to Adam, the day after the death of Abel, to have brought before his eyes half a million of men crowded together in the space of a square mile. ”

“ West, great as I willingly admit it to be, nor that of our great Barry, nor of Michel Angelo himself, the mightiest mind that ever ennobled the art, can render that sublime which is in itself inherently absurd. ”

“ How famous is that martial ring, which carried in some fit place, or rubbed on some such part, will allay and cure the pains of the teeth and head, the cramp, quartain ague, falling sickness, vertigo, apoplexy, plague, and other diseases! insomuch that the great captain of Hetruria commanded the inventor thereof (a brother of St. Augustine's order) to sell none to any but himself for some years. ”

“ The Duke's fame has probably died with this old German. There is something melancholy in calling to mind the barren accomplishments of the dead, even more so than in remembering beauty which is faded. ”

“ All hail! fruitful earth, alone proper and only prepared to bring forth the bread corn by which we are all sustained and nourished; happy leaven, which hath given relish to Adam's whole race, and seasoned the paste whereof the true life-giving and soul-saving bread was composed ”

“ As we however or our ancestors must have inoculated our fellow-creatures with this wasting disease of the soul, it becomes our duty to cure him: and though we cannot immediately make him free, yet we can and ought to, put him in the way of becoming so at some future time, if not in his own person yet in that of his children. The French are not capable of freedom. ”

“ As Chaucer has been called the well of English undefiled, so might Stanihurst be denominated the common sewer of the language. He is, however, a very entertaining, and to a philologist, a very instructive writer. His version of the four first books of the Æneid, is exceedingly rare, and deserves to be reprinted for its incomparable oddity. It seems impossible that a man could have written in such a style without intending to burlesque what he was about, and yet it is certain that Stanihurst seriously meant to write heroic poetry. ”