Robert Southey

“ But who can expect that human laws should correct that propensity in the wicked tongue! They who have “the poison of asps under their lips,” and “which have said with our tongues will we prevail; we are they that ought to speak: who is lord over us?”—they who “love to speak all words that may do hurt, and who cut with lies like a sharp razor”—what would they care for enactments which they would think either to evade by their subtlety, or to defy in the confidence of their numbers and their strength? ”

“ Read Landor's conversation between Lucullus and Cæsar, if thou art a scholar Reader, and if any thing can make thee think with respect and admiration of Lucullus, it will be the beautiful strain of feeling and philosophy that thou wilt find there. Wouldst thou see another work of first-rate genius, not less masterly in its kind, go and see Chantrey's bust of Sir William Curtis: and when thou shalt have seen what he hath made of that countenance, thou wilt begin to think it not impossible that a silk purse may be made of a sow's ear. ”

“ An old batchelor I warrant him, and mustier than his books.
Pedant!
Satirist!
Libeller!
Wretch!
Monster!
And Miss Virginia Vinegar compleats the climax by exclaiming with peculiar emphasis, Man!
All Indigo-land is in commotion; and Urgand the Unknown would be in as much danger proh-Jupiter! from the Stockingers, if he fell into their hands, as Orpheus from the Mænades. Tantæne animis cælestibus iræ?
Why Ladies! dear Ladies! good Ladies! gentle Ladies! merciful Ladies! hear me,—hear me! In justice, in compassion, in charity hear me! For your own sakes, and for the honour of feminality hear me! ”

“ And the pure soul emancipate by death,
The Enlarger, shall attain its end predoom'd,
The eternal newness of eternal joy.
“There are three Circles of Existence; the Circle of Infinity, where there is nothing but God, of living or dead, and none but God can traverse it; the Circle of Inchoation, where all things are by nature derived from Death,—this Circle hath been traversed by man; and the Circle of happiness, where all things spring from life,—this man shall traverse in heaven. ”

“ In infants, the seeds lie buried and undiscovered, till after a while they sprout forth in a kind of rational leaves, which are words; and in due season the flowers begin to appear in variety of beautiful colours, and all the gay pictures of youthful fancy and imagination; at last the fruit knits and is formed, which is green perhaps at first, sour and unpleasant to the taste, and not fit to be gathered; till ripened by due care and application, it discovers itself in all the noble productions of philosophy, mathematics, close reasoning and handsome argumentation. ”

“ It is not a good thing to be Tom'd or Bob'd, Jack'd or Jim'd, Sam'd or Ben'd, Natty'd or Batty'd, Neddy'd or Teddy'd, Will'd or Bill'd, Dick'd or Nick'd, Joe'd or Jerry'd as you go through the world. And yet it is worse to have a christian name, that for its oddity shall be in every body's mouth when you are spoken of, as if it were pinned upon your back, or labelled upon your forehead. ”

“ If God is glorified in the sun and moon, in the rare fabric of the honeycombs, in the discipline of bees, in the economy of pismires, in the little houses of birds, in the curiosity of an eye, God being pleased to delight in those little images and reflexes of himself from those pretty mirrors, which, like a crevice in the wall, through a narrow perspective, transmit the species of a vast excellency: much rather shall God be pleased to behold himself in the glasses of our obedience, in the emissions of our will and understanding ”

“ But to this day we are ignorant who has the honour to be his owner in the eye of the law; and the owner is equally ignorant of the high favour in which Hurlyburlybuss is held, of the heroic name which he has obtained, and that his fame has extended far and wide—even unto Norwich in the East, and Escott and Crediton and Kellerton in the West, yea—that with Rumpelstilzchen he has been celebrated in song, by some hitherto undiscovered poet, and that his glory will go down to future generations. ”

“ Emududakel, the Messenger of Death, receives the Soul as 'tis breathed out of the body into a kind of a sack, and runs away with it through briars and thorns and burning whirlwinds, which torment the Soul very sensibly, till he arrives at the bank of a fiery current, through which he is to pass to the other side in order to deliver the soul to Emen, the God of the Dead. ”

“ Poor Shenstone hardly appears more ridiculous in the frontispiece to his own works, where, in the heroic attitude of a poet who has won the prize and is about to receive the crown, he stands before Apollo in a shirt and boa, as destitute of another less dispensible part of dress as Adam in Eden, but like Adam when innocent, not ashamed: while the shirtless God holding a lyre in one hand prepares with the other to place a wreath of bay upon the brow of his delighted votary. ”

“ For as on the one side, a lower birth would have too much exposed him to the inconveniences of a mean descent, which are too notorious to need specifying; so on the other side, to a person whose humour indisposes him to the distracting hurry of the world, the being born heir to a great family is but a glittering kind of slavery, whilst obliging him to a public entangled course of life, to support the credit of his family, and tying him from satisfying his dearest inclinations, it often forces him to build the advantages of his house upon the ruins of his own contentment. ”

“ The fox is a cunning thief, and men, when they do not fear God, are crafty and deceitful. The wolf is cruel and blood-thirsty. As he devoureth the lamb, so do bad men oppress and tear the innocent and helpless.
“The adder is a poisonous snake, and hatha forked double tongue; and so men speak lies, and utter slanders against their neighbours, when the poison of asps is under their lips. The devil, who deceiveth with lies, and would destroy all mankind, is the old serpent, who brought death into the world by the venom of his bite. ”

“ That we may not be lost in looking for it in the boundless regions without, our great physical power is all within, in the bosom of our own circle; and the same facts which prove the greatness of this power to uphold, to penetrate, to enliven at such a distance, shew in what manner it might at last become weak,—become nothing. Whatever relations we may have to bodies without, or whatever they may have to one another, their influence is all directed to particular points,—to given distances. Material Nature has no substance, can make no effort, capable of pervading infinity. ”

“ Observe I call him free thinker not in disparagement, but in honour; he belongs to that service in which alone is perfect freedom.
“Perceiving,” he says, “as it is easy to do, the imperfection of our present system, instead of contemplating the immense prospect opened to our view in the progress of man, in the powers and the means he possesses, the philosopher sees through his telescope worlds and scales of being to his liking. ”

“ Grave-stones tell truth scarce forty years: Generations pass while some Trees stand, and old families last not three oaks. To be read by bare Inscriptions like many in Gruter, to hope for Eternity by Ænigmatical Epithetes, or first Letters of our names to be studied by Antiquaries, who we were, and have new names given us like many of the Mummies, are cold consolations unto the students of perpetuity even by everlasting Languages. ”

“ In Infinity and Eternity the sceptic sees an abyss in which all is lost, I see in them the residence of Almighty Power, in which my reason and my wishes find equally a firm support.—Here holding by the pillars of Heaven, I exist—I stand fast. ”

“ Thus as the accurate and moderate and erudite Mosheim informs us, the French theologian Claude Pajon was of opinion that in order to produce that amendment of the heart which is called regeneration, nothing more is requisite than to put the body, if its habit is bad, into a sound state by the power of physic, and having done this, than to set truth and falsehood before the understanding, and virtue and vice before the will, clearly and distinctly in their genuine colours, so as that their nature and their properties may be fully apprehended. ”

“ It is beyond the power of their Angekoks to remedy this evil; but these impostors pretend to the art of repairing a maimed soul, bringing home a strayed or runaway one, and of changing away one that is sickly, for the sound and sprightly one of a hare, a rein deer, a bird, or an infant.
“This is the peevishness of our humane wisdom, yea, rather of our humane folly, to earn for tidings from the dead, as if a spirit departed could declare anything more evidently than the book of God, which is the sure oracle of life? ”

“ I am merry that I may decoy people into my company, and grave that they may be the better for it. Now and then I put on the garb of a philosopher, and take the opportunity that disguise procures me, to drop a word in favour of religion. ”

“ One day longing much to eat calf's or mutton's feet, he struggled long in that glorious contest with the Soul, and as at last a well-seasoned dish of feet was put before him, he said unto his Soul, ‘See my Soul, the feet are before thee, if thou wantest to enjoy them, leave the body and feed on them.’ In the same moment a living creature was seen to come out of his mouth, which drank of the juice in the dish and having satisfied its appetite endeavoured to return into the mouth from whence it came. ”

“ But any such consciousness of pre-existence would in this stage of our mortal being be so incompatible with the condition of humanity, that the opinion itself can be held only as a speculation, of which no certainty can ever have been made known to man, because that alone has been revealed, the knowledge of which is necessary: the philosophers therefore who pretended to it, if they were sincere in the pretension (which may be doubted) are entitled to no more credit, than the poor hypochondriac who fancies himself a bottle or a tea-pot. ”

“ With such reasoning our Doctor was little satisfied; it was enough to know that as the sea produces monsters, so the sea covers them, and that fish are evidently lower in the scale of being than the creatures of earth and air. It is the system of Nature then that whatever is unseemly should be left in the earliest and lowest stages; that life as it ascends should cast off all deformity, as the butterfly leaves its exuviæ when its perfect form is developed; and finally that whatever is imperfect should be thrown off, and nothing survive in immortality but what is beautiful as well as good. ”

“ At such a point of etiquette the Doctor would laugh—but he was all earnestness when one like Bishop Hacket said, “Do not disgrace the dignity of a Preacher, when every petty vain occasion doth challenge the honour of a sermon before it. If ever there were τὸ δέον οὐκ ἐν τῶ δεόντι,—a good work marred for being done unreasonably,”— (in the Doctor's own words, Grace before a sluttish meal, a dirty table cloth) —“now it is when grace before meat will not serve the turn, but every luxurious feast must have the benediction of a preacher's pains before it. ”