Robert South Quotes

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

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

An obstacle is often an unrecognized opportunity

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

Passion is the drunkenness of the mind.

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

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

Innocence is like polished armor; it adorns and defends.

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

Aristotle was but a wreck of an Adam, and Athens but the rubbish of an Eden. How completely sin has defaced the divine image in man! That man has lost his righteousness and happiness is clearly evident as we look at the state of the world today!

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

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.

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

Pain is an outcry of sin.

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

Society is built upon trust.

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.

Abstinence is the great strengthener and clearer of reason.

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.

The grateful person fears no court or judge, no sentence or executioner, but what he carries about him in his own breast: and being still the most severe exactor of himself, not only confesses but proclaims his debts.

No man's religion ever survives his morals.

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.

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

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

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