ROBERT SOUTH

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.

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.

If there be any truer measure of a man than by what he does, it must be by what he gives.

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.

Abstinence is the great strengthener and clearer of reason.

Innocence is like polished armor; it adorns and defends.

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.

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

Loquacity storms the ear, but modesty takes the heart.

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

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

Wonder is from surprise, and surprise stops with experience.

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.

Novelty is the great parent of pleasure.

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.

Problems can become opportunities when the right people come together.

Truth will lose its credit, if delivered by a person that has none.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Passion is the drunkenness of the mind.

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