Robert Southey Quotes (51 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Letter to Charlotte Brontë in March 1837, reported in Gaskell The life of Charlotte Brontë, Vol. I (1857), p. 139, and in Mumby Letters of Literary Men, Vol. II (1906), p. 185.

“The arts babblative and scribblative.”

Robert Southey

Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, No. 1, pt. 2 (1829).

“Yet leaving here a name, I trust,
That will not perish in the dust.”

Robert Southey

My Days Among the Dead Are Past, st. 4.

“How beautiful is night!
A dewy freshness fills the silent air;
No mist obscures; nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain,
Breaks the serene of heaven:
In full-orbed glory, yonder moon divine
Rolls through the dark blue depths;
Beneath her steady ray
The desert circle spreads
Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.
How beautiful is night!”

Robert Southey

Thalaba the Destroyer http://www.litgothic.com/Texts/thalaba_frag.html, Bk. I, st. 1 (1800).

“And then they knew the perilous Rock,
And blest the Abbot of Aberbrothok.”

Robert Southey

The Inchcape Rock http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=6688&poem=28859, st. 4 (1802).

“Curses are like young chickens, they always come home to roost.”

Robert Southey

Motto.
The Curse of Kehama (1810)

“"You are old, Father William." the young man cried,
"The few locks which are left you are grey;
You are hale, Father William—a hearty old man:
Now tell me the reason, I pray."”

Robert Southey

The Old Man's Comforts and How He Gained Them http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/Classic%20Poems/Southey/the_old_man's_comforts.htm, st. 1 (1799).

“Oh, when a mother meets on high
The babe she lost in infancy,
Hath she not then for pains and fears,
The day of woe, the watchful night,
For all her sorrow, all her tears,
An over-payment of delight?”

Robert Southey

Canto X, st. 11.
The Curse of Kehama (1810)

“Write poetry for its own sake — not in a spirit of emulation, and not with a view to celebrity; the less you aim at that the more likely you will be to deserve and finally to obtain it.”

Robert Southey

Letter to Charlotte Brontë in March 1837; Gaskell The life of Charlotte Brontë, Vol. I (1857), p. 140.

“Thou hast been called, O sleep! the friend of woe;
But ’tis the happy that have called thee so.”

Robert Southey

Canto XV, st. 11.
The Curse of Kehama (1810)

“From its fountains
In the mountains,
Its rills and its gills;
Through moss and through brake,
It runs and it creeps
For a while, till it sleeps
In its own little lake.”

Robert Southey

St. 2. The Cataract of Lodore http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/652.html (1820)

“He passed a cottage with a double coach-house,
A cottage of gentility;
And he owned with a grin
That his favorite sin
Is pride that apes humility.”

Robert Southey

St. 8. Compare: "And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin / Is pride that apes humility", Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Devil's Thoughts. The Devil's Walk http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/shelley/devil/devil.rs1860.html (1799)

“The laws are with us, and God on our side.”

Robert Southey

On the Rise and Progress of Popular Disaffection, Essay viii, Vol. ii (1817).

“Somebody has been sitting in my chair!”

Robert Southey book Goldilocks and the Three Bears

"The Story of the Three Bears", The Doctor (1837).

“At this good news, so great
The Devil's pleasure grew,
That, with a joyful swish, he rent
The hole where his tail came through.”

Robert Southey

St. 31. The Devil's Walk http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/shelley/devil/devil.rs1860.html (1799)

“'Tis some poor fellow's skull," said he,
"Who fell in the great victory.”

Robert Southey

St. 3. The Battle of Blenheim http://www.poetry-archive.com/s/the_battle_of_blenheim.html (1798)

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

Robert Southey

Quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern, ed. Tryon Edwards, F. B. Dickerson Company (1908), p. 52

“Will ye believe
The wonders of the ocean? how its shoals
Sprang from the wave, like flashing light;.. took wing,
And, twinkling with a silver glitterance,
Flew through the air and sunshine? yet were they
To sight less wondrous than the tribe who swam,
Following like fowlers, with uplifted eye,
Their falling quarry:.. language cannot paint
Their splendid tints! though in blue ocean seen,
Blue, darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,
In all its rich variety of shades,
Suffus'd with glowing gold.”

Robert Southey

Madoc in Wales http://olivercowdery.com/texts/1805sout.htm#pg001, Part I, Sec. V - 48 (1805). Compare: "'Darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,' As some one somewhere sings about the sky", Lord Byron, Don Juan, canto iv. stanza 110.

“Thou hast confessions to listen,
And bells to christen,
And altars and dolls to dress;
And fools to coax,
And sinners to hoax,
And beads and bones to bless;
And great pardons to sell
For those who pay well,
And small ones for those who pay less.”

Robert Southey

St. 25. The Devil's Walk http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/shelley/devil/devil.rs1860.html (1799)

“But what they fought each other for
I could not well make out.”

Robert Southey

St. 6. The Battle of Blenheim http://www.poetry-archive.com/s/the_battle_of_blenheim.html (1798)

“From his brimstone bed, at break of day,
A-walking the Devil is gone,
To look at his little, snug farm of the World,
And see how his stock went on.”

Robert Southey

St. 1. The Devil's Walk http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/shelley/devil/devil.rs1860.html (1799)

“So I told them in rhyme,
For of rhymes I had store.”

Robert Southey

St. 1. The Cataract of Lodore http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/652.html (1820)

“My days among the Dead are past;
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.”

Robert Southey

My Days Among the Dead Are Past http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1957.html, st. 1 (1818).

“How, then, was the Devil dressed?
Oh! he was in his Sunday's best;
His coat was red, and his breeches were blue,
And there was a hole where his tail came through.”

Robert Southey

St. 3. The Devil's Walk http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/shelley/devil/devil.rs1860.html (1799)

“Every body is a critic.”

Robert Southey

Letter http://books.google.com/books?id=LUFjAAAAcAAJ&q=%22every+body+is+a+critic%22&pg=PA277#v=onepage to Robert Rickman (30 May 1804)

“Agreed to differ.”

Robert Southey

Life of Wesley (1820).

“The Satanic school.”

Robert Southey

Vision of Judgment, original preface (1821).

“The march of intellect.”

Robert Southey

Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, No. 1, pt. 14. Compare: "The march of the human mind is slow", Edmund Burke, Speech on the Conciliation of America, Vol. ii., p. 149.

“A man falls in love just as he falls down stairs. It is an accident. ”

Robert Southey