Robert Southey

“Live as long as you may, the first twenty years are the longest half of your life.”

“A kitten is in the animal world what a rosebud is in the garden.”

“They sin who tell us Love can die: with Life all other passions fly, all others are but vanity.”

“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.”

“To a resolute mind, wishing to do is the first step toward doing. But if we do not wish to do a thing it becomes impossible.”

“It is with words as with sunbeams - the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.”

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

“What will not woman, gentle woman dare; when strong affection stirs her spirit up?”

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

“All deception in the course of life is indeed nothing else but a lie reduced to practice, and falsehood passing from words into things.”

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

“Affliction is not sent in vain, young man, from that good God, who chastens whom he loves.”

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

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

“Never let a man imagine that he can pursue a good end by evil means, without sinning against his own soul. The evil effect on himself is certain.”

“Order is the sanity of the mind, the health of the body, the peace of the city, the security of the state. Like beams in a house or bones to a body, so is order to all things.”