Robert South

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

Abstinence is the great strengthener and clearer of reason.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Novelty is the great parent of pleasure.

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

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.

Passion is the drunkenness of the mind.

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.

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.

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.

Innocence is like polished armor; it adorns and defends.

Problems can become opportunities when the right people come together.

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

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

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

Wonder is from surprise, and surprise stops with experience.

Loquacity storms the ear, but modesty takes the heart.

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.

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

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