Remarks by Robert Southey | V2Melody Quotations

“He was altogether a good Cat, affectionate, vigilant, and brave; and for services performed against the Rats was deservedly raised in succession to the rank of Baron, Viscount and Earl.”

An affectionate and humorous tribute to a valued household cat · Letter to Edith May Southey, 18 June 1824

“The wiser people are the better they ought to be; & the better they are, the happier they must be.”

Connecting wisdom, goodness and happiness as mutually reinforcing qualities · Letter to Charles Cuthbert Southey, 1824

“There are three things which keep their appointed course, Time, Tide, & your father.”

A playful piece of paternal self-characterisation built on a familiar proverbial rhythm · Letter to Charles Cuthbert Southey, 1824

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

Advising artistic practice for its own sake rather than for fame · Letter to Charlotte Brontë, 12 March 1837

“Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and it ought not to be.”

A historically revealing statement of the gender conventions surrounding literary ambition in his period · Letter to Charlotte Brontë, 12 March 1837

“In these days nothing can be kept from the joint demands of cupidity and curiosity.”

A sharp observation on the forces that turn private lives into public material · Letter to Joseph Cottle, 30 September 1836

“In like manner I make the most of my enjoyments, and, though I do not cast my cares away, I pack them in as little compass as I can, carry them as conveniently as I can for myself, and never let them annoy others.”

Describing a practical philosophy of enjoying life while containing one’s burdens · Letter, 1829

“One fault begets another, one crime renders another necessary.”

Warning that wrongdoing can generate its own escalating chain of consequences · Prose, The Book of the Church, 1824

“If any are lost for want of care and culture, there is a sin of omission in the society to which they belong.”

Placing responsibility on society when neglect prevents people from flourishing · Prose, Colloquies on Society

“Beasts, birds, and insects, even to the minutest and meanest of their kind, act with the unerring providence of instinct; man, the while, who possesses a higher faculty, abuses it, and therefore goes blundering on.”

Contrasting animal instinct with humanity’s capacity to misuse reason · Prose, Sir Thomas More; or, Colloquies, 1829

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

Turning a familiar warning about intentions into a defence of sincere moral purpose · Prose, Sir Thomas More; or, Colloquies, 1829

“The history of any private family, however humble, could it be fully related for five or six generations, would illustrate the state and progress of society better than the most elaborate dissertation.”

Arguing that ordinary family lives can illuminate social history more vividly than abstraction · Prose, The Doctor

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

Capturing the way childhood and youth can seem disproportionately spacious in memory · Prose, The Doctor

“A fastidious taste is like a squeamish appetite; the one has its origin in some disease of the mind, as the other has in some ailment of the stomach.”

Using comic analogy to question excessive refinement of taste · Prose, The Doctor

“What blockheads are those wise persons, who think it necessary that a child should comprehend everything it reads.”

Defending a child’s freedom to encounter books before fully understanding them · Prose, The Doctor

“A stubborn mind conduces as little to wisdom or even to knowledge, as a stubborn temper to happiness.”

Warning that intellectual inflexibility can obstruct both knowledge and wisdom · Prose, The Doctor

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

Presenting love as essential to both human feeling and moral life · Prose, The Doctor

“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.”

A warmly domestic celebration of childhood, animals and household happiness · Prose, The Doctor

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

Defining enduring friendship as confidence in another person’s character · Prose, The Doctor

“How unendurable would life be if it were not for the belief that we shall meet again in a better state of existence.”

Finding consolation for separation and loss in the hope of reunion after death · Letter to Neville White, 8 November 1814

“There are but too many of these long good-byes in life.”

A restrained acknowledgement of the separations that accumulate through life · Letter to Neville White, 8 November 1814

“The pulpit is a clergyman’s parade, the parish is his field of active service.”

Contrasting public preaching with sustained practical service in a community · Letter to James White, 2 May 1814

“Everywhere else, what is required of the preacher is to be plain, perspicuous, and in earnest. If he feels himself, he will make his congregation feel.”

Arguing that clarity and sincerity are more persuasive than elaborate display · Letter to James White, 2 May 1814

“A good man and a wise man may at times be angry with the world, at times grieved for it; but be sure no man was ever discontented with the world if he did his duty in it.”

Connecting lasting contentment with purposeful conduct rather than circumstance · Letter to Grosvenor C. Bedford, 31 March 1804

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