Robert South Quotes

Defeat should never be a source of discouragement but rather a fresh stimulus.

The seven wise men of Greece, so famous for their wisdom all the world over, acquired all that fame, each of them, by a single sentence consisting of two or three words.

Similes prove nothing, but yet greatly lighten and relieve the tedium of argument.

An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise.

Guilt upon the conscience, like rust upon iron, both defiles and consumes it, gnawing and creeping into it, as that does which at last eats out the very heart and substance of the metal.

Innocence is like polished armor; it adorns and defends.

Much reading is like much eating -wholly useless without digestion.

The covetous person lives as if the world were made altogether for him, and not he for the world.

Most of the appearance of mirth in the world is not mirth, it is art. The wounded spirit is not seen, but walks under a disguise.

Abstinence is the great strengthener and clearer of reason.

An obstacle is often an unrecognized opportunity

Passion is the drunkenness of the mind.

Action is the highest perfection and drawing forth of the utmost power, vigor, and activity of man's nature.

Society is built upon trust.

It is the work of fancy to enlarge, but of judgment to shorten and contract; and therefore this must be as far above the other as judgment is a greater and nobler faculty than fancy or imagination.

Speech was given to the ordinary sort of men, whereby to communicate their mind; but to wise men, whereby to conceal it.

The mind begins to boggle at unnatural substances as things paradoxical and incomprehensible.

Anger is a transient hatred; or at least very like it.

Folly enlarges men's desires while it lessens their capacities.

Let a man be but in earnest in praying against a temptation as the tempter is in pressing it, and he needs not proceed by a surer measure.

He who has no mind to trade with the Devil should be so wise as to keep from his shop.

A man's life is an appendix to his heart.

No man's religion ever survives his morals.

So he that despairs, limits an Infinite Power to a Finite Apprehension, and measures Providence by his own little, contracted Model.

A true friend is the gift of God, and He only who made hearts can unite them.

Pain is an outcry of sin.

Flints may be melted - we see it daily - but an ungrateful heart cannot be; not by the strongest and noblest flame.

God afflicts with the mind of a father, and kills for no other purpose but that he may raise again.

For he that is a good man, is three quarters of his way towards the being a good Christian, wheresoever he lives, or whatsoever he is called.

There is not the least flower but seems to hold up its head, and to look pleasantly, in the secret sense of the goodness of its Heavenly Maker.

He who does a kindness to an ungrateful person, sets his seal to a flint and sows his seed upon the sand; on the former he makes no impression, and from the latter finds no product.

Anger is a transient hatred or at least very like it.