Speech was given to the ordinary sort or men, whereby to communicate their mind; but to wise men, whereby to conceal it. – Robert South
If there be any truer measure of a man than by what he does, it must be by what he gives. – Robert South
It is idleness that creates impossibilities; and where people don’t care to do anything, they shelter themselves under a permission that it cannot be done. – Robert South
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. – Robert South
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. – Robert South
God expects from men something more than at such times, and that it were much to be wished for the credit of their religion as well as the satisfaction of their conscience that their Easter devotions would in some measure come up to their Easter dress. – Robert South
An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise. – Robert South
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. – Robert South
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
The mind begins to boggle at unnatural substances as things paradoxical and incomprehensible. – Robert South
In all worldly things that a man pursues with the greatest eagerness he finds not half the pleasure in the possession that he proposed to himself in the expectation. – Robert South
God afflicts with the mind of a father, and kills for no other purpose but that he may raise again. – Robert South
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. – Robert South
Action is the highest perfection and drawing forth of the utmost power, vigor, and activity of man’s nature. – Robert South
