Robert Southey

“ The sun sets behind the mountains, bloody with the day of battle.
“The flush of health in flesh, exposed to the open air, nourished by the spirits of forests and floods, in that ancient happy period, which history has recorded, cannot be like the sickly daubs of Titian or Rubens. Where will the copier of nature, as it now is, find a civilized man, who has been accustomed to go naked. Imagination only can furnish us with colouring appropriate, such as is found in the frescoes of Rafael, and Michael Angelo: the disposition of forms always directs colouring in works of true art. ”

“ I grew impatient of control, was fond of company, wished to mingle more than I had ever done with young people; I got also a passion for better clothing, than that which fell to my lot in life, was discontented when I found a neighbour's son dressed better than myself. I lost the spirit of subordination, and did not love work, imbibed a spirit of idleness, and in short, drunk in all the brain-sickening effluvia of pleasure; dancing and company took the place of reading and study ”

“ Poetry as it exists now on earth, in the various remains of ancient authors, Music as it exists in old tunes or melodies, Painting and Sculpture as it exists in the remains of antiquity and in the works of more modern genius, is Inspiration, and cannot be surpassed; it is perfect and eternal: Milton, Shakspeare, Michael Angelo, Rafael, the finest specimens of ancient Sculpture and Painting, and Architecture, Gothic, Grecian, Hindoo and Egyptian are the extent of the human mind. The human mind cannot go beyond the gift of God, the Holy Ghost. ”

“ Tell me the acts O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your reasoning and your rubbish. All that is not action is not worth reading. Tell me the What; I do not want you to tell me the Why, and the How; I can find that out myself, as well as you can, and I will not be fooled by you into opinions, that you please to impose, to disbelieve what you think improbable, or impossible. His opinion, who does not see spiritual agency, is not worth any man's reading; he who rejects a fact because it is improbable, must reject all History, and retain doubts only. ”

“ I am not going to renounce the other part of our religion, but to add another article of faith to it, without which I cannot understand the rest. And if it be possible to believe too much in God, I desire to be guilty of that sin.
“Behold ye despisers and wonder! Wonder to see Paradise lost, with the Tree of Life in the midst of it! Wonder and curse at Adam for an original fool, who in the length of one day never so much as thought to put forth his hand, for him and us, and pull and eat and live for ever! ”

“ It has been said to the Artist, take the Apollo for the model of your beautiful man, and the Hercules for your strong man, and the Dancing Fawn for your ugly man. Now he comes to his trial. He knows that what he does is not inferior to the grandest antiques. Superior they cannot be, for human power cannot go beyond either what he does, or what they have done, it is the gift of God, it is inspiration and vision. He had resolved to emulate those precious remains of antiquity. ”

“ All had originally one language, and one religion, this was the religion of Jesus, the everlasting Gospel. Antiquity preached the Gospel of Jesus, the reasoning historian, turner and twister of courses and consequences, such as Hume, Gibbon, and Voltaire, cannot with all their artifice, turn or twist one fact, or disarrange self evident action and reality. Reasons and opinions concerning acts are not history. Acts themselves alone are history, and they are neither the exclusive property of Hume, Gibbon, and Voltaire, Echard, Rapin, Plutarch, nor Herodotus. ”

“ There is, and always hath been, and ever will be, a latent superstition in the most rational of men. It belongs to the weakness and dependence of human nature. Believing as the scriptures teach us to believe, that signs and tokens have been vouchsafed in many cases, is it to be wondered at that we seek for them sometimes in our moods of fancy, or that they suggest themselves to us in our fears and our distress? Men may cast off religion and extinguish their conscience without ridding themselves of this innate and inherent tendency. ”

“ Who indeed shall persuade me, or who indeed will be persuaded, that if she had wished to drop the title of spinster and take her matrimonial degree, she would not have found some good excuse for putting an end to the dance when she had found a partner to her liking? A little of that wit which seldom fails a woman when it is needed, would have taught her how to do this with a grace, and make it appear that she was still an invincible dancer, though the Stars had decreed that in this instance she should lose the honour of the dance. ”

“ You have seldom or never had the truth spoken to you when you have been directly addressed. You have been called the enlightened Public, the generous Public, the judicious Public, the liberal Public, the discerning Public, and so forth. Nay your bare title THE PUBLIC, oftentimes stands alone par excellence in its plain majesty like that of the king, as if needing no affix to denote its inherent and pre-eminent importance. ”

“ FREEMAN'S SERMONS.
“As usurers,” says Bishop Reynolds, “before the whole debt is paid, do fetch away some good parts of it for the loan, so before the debt of death be paid by the whole body, old age doth by little and little, take away sometimes one sense sometimes another, this year one limb, the next another; and causeth a man as it were to die daily. No one can dispel the clouds and sorrows of old age, but Christ who is the sun of righteousness and the bright morning star.” ”

“ But Johnson knew that good men became better as they grew older, because his philosophy was that of the Gospel. Something of a philosopher Lord Chesterfield was, and had he lived in the days of Trajan or Hadrian, might have done honour to the school of Epicurus. But if he had not in the pride of his poor philosophy shut both his understanding and his heart against the truths of revealed religion, in how different a light would the evening of his life have closed. ”

“ Whoever studies the history of opinions, that is, of the aberrations, caprices and extravagancies of the human mind, may find some consolation in reflecting upon the practical morality which has been preached not only by men of the most erroneous faith, but even by fanatics, impostors and hypocrites, as if it were in the order of Providence that there should be no poison which had not also some medicinal virtue. The books of palmistry have been so worn by perusal that one in decent preservation is now among the rarities of literature ”

“ If the death of the body be included in the Fall, why is not the life of the body included in the Resurrection? And what if I have a firmer belief of this than some others have? Am I therefore a blasphemer? Or would they that believe less take it well of me to call them so. Our Saviour in his day took notice of some of little faith and some of great faith, without stigmatizing either of them with blasphemy for it. But I do not know how 'tis, we are fallen into such a sort of uniformity that we would fain have Religion into a Tyrant's bed, torturing one another into our own size of it only. ”

“ The beginning of this faith, like all other parts of the Kingdom of Heaven will be like a grain of mustard seed, spreading itself by degrees till it overshadow the whole earth. And since ‘the things concerning Him must have an end,’ in order to this they must have a beginning. But whoever leads the van will make the world start, and must expect for himself to walk up and down, like Cain, with a mark on his forehead, and run the gauntlet for an Ishmaelite, having every man's hand against him because his hand is against every man ”

“ We behold other mens tragedies played before us; we hear what is promised and threatened; but the world's bright glory hath put out the eyes of our minds; and these betraying lights, with which we only see, do neither look up towards termless joys, nor down towards endless sorrows, till we neither know, nor can look for anything else at the world's hands.—But let us not flatter our immortal Souls herein! ”

“ As the ancients found in the butterfly a beautiful emblem of the immortality of the Soul, my true philosopher and friend looked, in like manner, upon the chrysalis as a type of old age. The gradual impairment of the senses and of the bodily powers, and the diminution of the whole frame as it shrinks and contracts itself in age, afforded analogy enough for a mind like his to work on, which quickly apprehended remote similitudes, and delighted in remarking them. ”

“ Yet our Lord and Saviour hath not left those who are in darkness and the shadow of death, without the light of a heavenly hope at their departure, if their ways have not wilfully been evil,—if they have done their duty according to that law of nature which is written in the heart of man. It is the pride of presumptuous wisdom (itself the worst of follies) that has robbed the natural man of his consolation in old age, and of his hope in death, and exacts the forfeit of that hope from the infidel as the consequence and punishment of his sin. ”

“ The Artist has considered his strong man as a receptacle of Wisdom, a sublime energizer; his features and limbs do not spindle out into length, without strength, nor are they too large and unwieldy for his brain and bosom. Strength consists in accumulation of power to the principal seat, and from thence a regular gradation and subordination; strength in compactness, not extent nor bulk.
“The strong man acts from conscious superiority, and marches on in fearless dependence on the divine decrees, raging with the inspirations of a prophetic mind. ”

“ Carticeya is more powerful than Garuda, and therefore the divine Eagle is too rational to invade them while they are under his protection. It would have been more fortunate for the world if the King of Serpents had not found any one to protect him; for whatever his merits may be towards his subjects, he is a most pestilent Potentate, the breath of his nostrils is a fiery wind which destroys and consumes all creatures and all herbs within an hundred yojanas of his abode, and which in fact is the Simoom, so fatal to those who travel in the deserts. ”

“ Would we sum up the virtues and praise of a perfect Woman, how should we do it but by saying that she was devout in religion, decorous in conduct, domestic in habits, dextrous in business, dutiful as a wife, diligent as a mother, discreet as a mistress, in manner debonnaire, in mind delicate, in person delicious, in disposition docile, in all things delightful. ”

“ I clearly knew that I had missed the entrance of true philosophy, on all sides obstacles and obscurities and difficulties appeared, which neither labour, nor time, nor vigils, nor expenditure of money could overcome and disperse, but only the mere goodness of God. ”

“ The reason why I believe that this doctrine is true, is, because God hath said it: yet I could not thus assert it by argument, if I did not conceive it with more self-conviction than I have from any maxims or positions in human science. The Covenant of Eternal Life is a Law of itself and a science of itself, which can never be known by the study of any other science. It is a science out of Man's way, being a pure invention of God. Man knows no more how to save himself than he did to create himself ”

“ He knew that in old age the tendency of Nature is to dissolution, and that accidents which are trifling in youth, or middle age, become fatal at a time when Death is ready to enter at any breach and Life to steal out through the first flaw in its poor crazy tenement. ”

“ Authors are often classed, like painters, according to the school, in which they have been trained, or to which they have attached themselves. But it is not so easy to ascertain this in literature as it is in painting; and if some of the critics who have thus endeavoured to class them, were sent to school themselves and there whipt into a little more learning, so many silly classifications of this kind would not mislead those readers who suppose in the simplicity of their own good faith, that no man presumes to write upon a subject which he does not understand. ”

“ Speculative knowledge, Digby said to him, was no doubt a refined and agreeable pursuit, but it was too uncertain and too useless to be made a man's occupation, life being so short that one has scarcely time to acquire well the knowledge of necessary things. It would be far more worthy of a person like Descartes, he observed, who so well understood the construction of the human frame, if he would apply himself to discover means of prolonging its duration, rather than attach himself to the mere speculation of philosophy. ”

“ And the rest of the Living go lie with them! I'll follow him that was dead, and is alive, and living for ever. And though I am now single, yet I believe that this belief will be general before the general change, of which Paul speaks, shall come; and that then, and not before, shall be the Resurrection of the Just, which is called the first Resurrection; and after that the Dead so arisen, with the Living, then alive, shall have learned this faith, which shall qualify them to be caught up together in the air, then shall be the General Resurrection, after which Time shall be no more. ”

“ While therefore he would not allow that any person could be unfortunately ugly, he thought that many were unfortunately handsome, and that no wise parent would wish his daughter to be eminently beautiful, lest what in her childhood was naturally and allowably the pride of his eye—should when she grew up become the grief of his heart. It requires no wide range of observation to discover that the woman who is married for her beauty has little better chance of happiness than she who is married for her fortune. ”