Robert Southey

“ Miller disliked Mason: described him as sullen, reserved, capricious and unamiable; and this which he declared to be “the real character of this celebrated poet,” he inserted, he said, “as a lesson to mankind, to shew them what little judgement can be formed of the heart of an author, either by the sublimity of his conceptions, the beauty of his descriptions, or the purity of his sentiments.” ”

“ Negresses in the West Indies sometimes attain an age which is seldom ascertained because it is far beyond living memory. They outlive all voluntary power, and their descendants of the third or fourth generation carry them out of their cabins into the open air, and lay them, like logs, as the season may require, in the sunshine, or in the shade. Methinks if Mecænas had seen such an object, he would have composed a palinode to those verses in which he has perpetuated his most pitiable love for life. ”

“ They may be paralyzed by pauperism, they may be rotted by the licentiousness of luxury; but there is no grade of society in which they do not exhibit themselves in the highest degree. Tragic poets have been attracted by the sufferings of the great, and have laid the scene of their fables in the higher circles of life; yet tragedy represents no examples more touching or more dreadful, for our admiration or abhorrence, to thrill us with sympathy or with indignation, than are continually occurring in all classes of society. ”

“ But if we were to see before us the prospect of a life of one thousand years, we should doubtless regard death as a bug-bear indeed, and throw off all the salutary restraint which the fear of it now exercises. Suppose our tendencies to every kind of sinful indulgence as strong as at present, with the prospect of such lengthened enjoyment and immunity from danger, and we may easily imagine with what hundred-fold eagerness we should plunge into all kinds of enormity, and revel in the wildest licentiousness. ”

“ Of those passions which are or deserve to be the subject of legal and judicial tragedy, the lawyers necessarily see most, and for this reason perhaps they think worse of human nature than any other class of men, except the Roman Catholic Clergy. Physicians on the contrary, though they see humanity in its most humiliating state, see it also in the exercise of its holiest and most painful duties. No other persons witness such deep emotions and such exertions of self-controul. ”

“ It was upon a false notion of humanity that the House of Commons proceeded, when it prolonged the interval between the sentence of a murderer and the execution. The merciful course in all cases would be, that execution should follow upon the sentence with the least possible delay.
“Heaven help the man, says a goodnatured and comely reader who has a ring on the fourth finger of her left hand,—Heaven help the man! Does he compare marriage to hanging, to a dose of physic, and to a plunge over head and ears in cold water?” ”

“ But I enjoy all these blessings with trembling and anxiety, for after my dear Beauchamp, what human things can appear permanent? Youth, beauty, virtue, health, were not sufficient to save him from the hand of death, and who then can think themselves secure? ”

“ Nevertheless that the practice of Physic, and still more of surgery, should have an effect like that of war upon the persons engaged in it, is what those who are well acquainted with human nature might expect, and would be at no loss to account for. It is apparent that in all these professions coarse minds must be rendered coarser, and hard hearts still farther indurated; and that there is a large majority of such minds and hearts in every profession, trade and calling, few who have had any experience of the ways of the world can doubt. ”

“ Peter Collinson, whose pious memory ought to be a standing toast at the meetings of the Horticultural Society, used to say that he never knew an instance in which the pursuit of such pleasure as the culture of a garden affords, did not either find men temperate and virtuous, or make them so. And this may be affirmed as an undeniable and not unimportant fact relating to the lower classes of society, that wherever the garden of a cottage or other humble dwelling, is carefully and neatly kept, neatness and thrift and domestic comfort will be found within doors. ”

“ Southey, “and through a thousand changes, so long as you fall into the subject at last, and bring back the ear to the right key at the close.”
Where we are at this present reading, the attentive reader cannot but know; and if the careless one has lost himself, it is his fault, not mine. We are in the parenthesis between the Doctor's courtship and his marriage. Life has been called a parenthesis between our birth and death; the history of the human race is but a parenthesis between two cataclasms of the globe which it inhabits; time itself only a parenthesis in eternity. ”

“ After describing the state of a justified Christian, he rises into the following strain: “And now what has this happy person to do in this world any longer, having his debts paid and his sins pardoned, his God reconciled, his conscience quieted and assured, his accusers silenced, his enemies vanquished, the law satisfied, and himself justified, and his Saviour glorified, and a crown of Immortality, and a robe of righteousness prepared for him? ”

“ There is but one proper for the decline of life, and indeed the only one worth the anxiety of a rational creature at any age: but how do the fire of youth, and flattery of the world blind our eyes, and mislead our fancies, after a thousand imaginary pleasures which are sure to disappoint us in the end!”
The Duchess was a person whose moral constitution had not been injured by the atmosphere of a court. But though she kept aloof from its intrigues and had acquired even a distaste for its vanities, she retained always an affectionate regard for Queen Caroline's memory. ”

“ There will be some who see nothing more in this affecting anecdote than an exemplification of the vanity of human pursuits; but it is not refining too much, if we perceive in it a consolatory mark of a cheerful and philosophical mind, retaining its character even when far in decay. For no one who had not acquired a habit of happy philosophy would have extracted amusement from his infirmities, and made the failure of his memory serve to beguile some of those hours which could then no longer be profitably employed. ”

“ There is no time of life after we become capable of reflection, in which the world to come must not to any considerate mind appear of more importance to us than this;—no time in which we have not a greater stake there. ”

“ He thought that when the ascent of being has been from good to better through all its stages, in moral qualities as well as in physical developement, the immortal spirit might reach its human stage in such a state that it required nothing more than the vehicle of humanity, and might be spared its probation. As Enoch had been translated without passing through death, so he thought such happy spirits might be admitted into a higher sphere of existence without passing through the trials of sin and the discipline of sorrow. ”

“ Fourteenthly, to speak ill of women is a sin because of the beauty which distinguishes their sex, which beauty is so admirable that there is more to praise in one woman than there can be to condemn in all.
Fifteenthly, it is a sin because all the benefactors of mankind have been born of women, and therefore we are obliged to women for all the good that has ever been done in the world.
Such are the fifteen reasons which Diego de San Pedro excogitated to show that it is wrong for men to speak ill of women ”

“ During the short time that his wife lived after his marriage, Miller observed that he appeared more animated and agreeable in his conversation, that is to say, he was cheerful because he was happy. After her death (and who has ever perused her epitaph without emotion?) he relapsed into a discontented habit of mind, as might be expected from one who had remained unmarried too long, and who although he might be said in the worldly sense of the word to have been a fortunate man, was never, except during the short duration of his marriage, a happy one. ”

“ A certain Ludovicus Bosch, instead of having his coat of arms, or his cypher engraved to put in his books, had a little print of himself in his library. The room has a venerable collegiate character; there is a crucifix on the table, and a goodly proportion of folios on the shelves. Bosch in a clerical dress is seated in an easy chair, cogitabund, with a manuscript open before him, a long pen in his hand, and on his head a wig which with all proper respect for the dignity and vocation of the wearer, I cannot but honestly denominate a caxon. ”

“ Even our three-score and ten years, broken and uncertain as that little span is, can delude us into the folly of putting death and its dread reckoning far from us, as if we were never to die, and might therefore neglect any preparation for the after judgement. ”

“ The tender affection that a good husband naturally has to the wife of his bosom is such as to make him often pass by the greatest insults that can be offered to human nature: such I mean as the senseless provoking arguments used by one who will not be awakened from delusion till poverty appears, shows the ingratitude of false friends in prosperity, and brings her to sad repentance in adversity: she will then wish she had been foreseeing as her husband, when it is too late ”

“ If there be any reader so inconsiderate as to exclaim, “what have we to do with the temper and character of a low-lived woman who was dead and buried long before we were born, whom nobody ever heard of before, and for whom nobody cares a straw now! ”

“ So they found their way first into the gardens of the curious, then of the rich, and lastly, when their beauty recommended them, spread themselves into those of ordinary persons. He divided his time between his counting-house in Gracechurch street, and his country house and garden at Mill Hill, near Hendon: it might have grieved him could he have foreseen that his grounds there would pass after his death into the hands of a purchaser who in mere ignorance rooted out the rarest plants, and cut down trees which were scarcely to be found in perfection anywhere else in the kingdom at that time. ”