He that governs well, leads the blind; put he that teaches, gives him eyes; and it is glorious to be a sub-worker to grace, in freeing it from some of the inconveniences of original sin.
—Robert South
Topics: Teaching
God never accepts a good inclination instead of a good action, where that action may be done; nay, so much the contrary, that, if a good inclination be not seconded by a good action, the want of that action is made so much the more criminal and inexcusable.
—Robert South
How little do they see what really is, who frame their hasty judgment upon that which seems.
—Robert South
Topics: Judgment, Appearance
To make our reliance upon providence both pious and rational, we should prepare all things with the same care, diligence, and activity, as if there were no such thing as providence for us to depend upon; and then, when we have done all this, we should as wholly and humbly rely upon it, as if we had made no preparation at all.
—Robert South
Pride is the common forerunner of a fall. It was the devil’s sin, and the devil’s ruin; and has been, ever since, the devil’s stratagem, who, like an expert wrestler, usually gives a man a lift before he gives him a throw.
—Robert South
Topics: Pride
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.
—Robert South
Topics: Taste
A good name is properly that reputation of virtue which every man may challenge as his right and due in the opinion of others, till he has made forfeit of it by the viciousness of his actions.
—Robert South
Topics: Reputation
No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other’s worth.
—Robert South
Topics: Friends and Friendship
All love has something of blindness in it, but the love of money especially.
—Robert South
Topics: Money
Take away love, and not physical nature only, but the heart of the moral world would be palsied.
—Robert South
Topics: Love
How inevitably does an immoderate laughter end in a sigh!
—Robert South
Topics: Laughter
The tale-bearer and the tale-hearer should be both hanged up, back to back, one by the tongue, the other by the ear.
—Robert South
The Scripture vouches Solomon for the wisest of men; and his proverbs prove him so. 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.
—Robert South
Topics: Proverbs
Live as long as you may, the first twenty years are the longest half of your life.
—Robert South
Topics: Age, Birthdays
If there be any truer measure of a man than by what he does, it must be by what he gives.
—Robert South
Topics: Generosity, Action, Giving
Excess is not the only thing that breaks up both health and enjoyment; many are brought into a very ill and languishing habit of body by mere sloth, which is both a great sin, and the cause of many more.
—Robert South
Wisdom is the name God gives to religion, so telling the world what it will hardly believe, that the two great things which so engross the desire and designs of both the nobler and ignobler sort of mankind, are to be found in religion, viz.: wisdom and pleasure, and that the former is the direct way to the latter, as religion is to both.
—Robert South
Topics: Wisdom
Innocence is like polished armor; it adorns and defends.
—Robert South
Topics: Innocence
That charity is bad which takes from independence its proper pride, and from mendicity its proper shame.
—Robert South
Topics: Charity
Affliction is not sent in vain from the good God who chastens those that he loves.
—Robert South
Topics: Trials, Justice
A good inclination is but the first rude draught of virtue; but the finishing strokes are from the will; which, if well disposed, will, by degrees perfect; if ill disposed, will, by the super-induction of ill habits, quickly deface it.
—Robert South
Topics: Will
All deception in the course of life is indeed nothing else but a lie reduced to practice, and falsehood passing from words into things.
—Robert South
Topics: Deceit, Deception, Deception/Lying
This peculiar ill property has folly, that it enlarges men’s desires while it lessens their capacities.
—Robert South
The creator made us to be the image of his own eternity, and in the desire for immortality we feel we have sure proof of our capacity for it.
—Robert South
Topics: Immortality
The covetous person lives as if the world were made altogether for him, and not he for the world; to take in everything and part with nothing.
—Robert South
Speech was given to the ordinary sort of men, whereby to communicate their mind; but to wise men, whereby to conceal it.
—Robert South
What a world were this; how unendurable its weight, if they whom death had sundered did not meet again?
—Robert South
There is nothing more properly the language of the heart than a wish. It is the thirst and egress of it, after some wanted, but desired object.
—Robert South
Topics: Wishes
He who has no mind to trade with the devil, should be so wise as to keep away from his shop.
—Robert South
Topics: Temptation
Love covers a multitude of sins. When a scar cannot be taken away, the next kind office is to hide it.—Love is never so blind as when it is to spy faults.—It is like the painter, who, being to draw the picture of a friend having a blemish in one eye, would picture only the other side of his face.—It is a noble and great thing to cover the blemishes and to excuse the failings of a friend; to draw a curtain before his stains, and to display his perfections; to bury his weaknesses in silence, but to proclaim his virtues upon the house-top.
—Robert South
Topics: Love
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Henry Liddon English Theologian
- Philip James Bailey English Poet
- Matthew Prior English Poet, Diplomat
- Ford Madox Ford English Novelist, Poet, Critic
- Walter Savage Landor English Writer
- Charles Kingsley English Clergyman
- Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford English Poet, Courtier
- John Berger English Art Critic, Essayist, Novelist
- Francis Quarles English Religious Poet
- John Keats English Poet
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