The collection / 66 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01c. 1808 AD

Call not that man wretched, who, whatever ills he suffers, has a child to love.

Robert Southey / quote

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02c. 1808 AD

By nature peccable and frail are we, Easily beguiled; to vice, to error prone; But apt for virtue too. Humanity Is not a field where tares and thorns alone Are left to spring; good seed hath there been sown With no unsparing hand. Sometimes the shoot Is choked with weeds, or withers on a stone; But in a kindly soil it strikes its root, And flourisheth, and bringeth forth abundant fruit.

Robert Southey / quote

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03c. 1808 AD

O, 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 sorrows, all her tears, An over-payment of delight?

Robert Southey / quote

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04c. 1808 AD

O God! have mercy in this dreadful hour On the poor mariner! in comfort here Safe shelter’d as I am, I almost fear The blast that rages with resistless power. What were it now to toss upon the waves— The madden’d waves, and know no succour near; The howling of the storm alone to hear, And the wild sea that to the tempest raves; To gaze amid the horrors of the night, And only see the billows’ gleaming light; And in the dread of death to think of her Who, as she listens sleepless to the gale, Puts up a silent prayer and waxes pale? O God! have mercy on the mariner!

Robert Southey / quote

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05c. 1808 AD

I marvel not, O sun, that unto thee In adoration man should bow the knee, And pour the prayer of mingled awe and love; For like a God thou art, and on thy way Of glory sheddest, with benignant ray, Beauty and life and joyance from above.

Robert Southey / quote

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06c. 1808 AD

A house is never perfectly furnished for enjoyment unless there is a child in it rising three years old, and a kitten rising three weeks.

Robert Southey / quote

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07c. 1808 AD

My ways are as broad as the king's high road, and my means lie in an inkstand.

Robert Southey / quote

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08c. 1808 AD

How little do they see what is, who frame their hasty judgment upon that which seems.

Robert Southey / quote

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09c. 1808 AD

Take away love, and not physical nature only, but the heart of the moral world would be palsied.

Robert Southey / quote

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10c. 1808 AD

There are some readers who have never read an essay on taste; and if they take my advice they never will; for they can no more improve their taste by so doing than they could improve their appetite or digestion by studying a cookery-book.

Robert Southey / quote

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11c. 1808 AD

There are three things a wise man will not trust: the wind, the sunshine of an April day, and woman's plighted faith.

Robert Southey / quote

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12c. 1808 AD

Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be.(Southey's reply to Charlotte Bronte)

Robert Southey / quote

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13c. 1808 AD

It is not for man to rest in absolute contentment.

Robert Southey / quote

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14c. 1808 AD

Is but the threshold of eternity.

Robert Southey / quote

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15c. 1808 AD

It has been more wittily than charitably said that hell is paved with good intentions. They have their place in heaven also.

Robert Southey / quote

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16c. 1808 AD

It is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condensed the deeper they burn.

Robert Southey / quote

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17c. 1808 AD

No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other's worth.

Robert Southey / quote

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18c. 1808 AD

The loss of a friend is like that of a limb; time may heal the anguish of the wound, but the loss cannot be repaired.

Robert Southey / quote

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