Robert South (1634–1716) was an English theologian and preacher. He was known for his vigorous preaching and his Latin poetry.
Born in Hackney, London, South was educated at Westminster and Christ Church-Oxford. He accepted Presbyterianism for a time, but he received orders in secret in 1658 and, was appointed public orator of Oxford in 1660. His sermons, which are full of contempt of the Puritans, roused the reinstated royalists.
South became a family chaplain to Edward, 1st Earl Clarendon, prebendary of Westminster (1663,) canon of Christ Church (1670,) and rector at Islip (1678,) but his bluntness limited further preferment. He acquiesced in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 but strongly opposed the Comprehension of dissenters’ scheme in 1689.
South published a large number of sermons, and they appeared in a collected form in 1692 in six volumes, reaching a second edition in his lifetime in 1715. His Sermons on Several Occasions was published in 1878.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Robert South
To a resolute mind, wishing to do is the first step toward doing. But if we do not wish to do a thing it becomes impossible.
—Robert South
Take away love, and not physical nature only, but the heart of the moral world would be palsied.
—Robert South
Topics: Love
No man’s religion ever survives his morals.
—Robert South
Topics: Religion
The disappointed man turns his thoughts toward a state of existence where his wiser desires may be fixed with the certainty of faith.—The successful man feels that the objects he has ardently pursued fail to satisfy the craving of an immortal spirit. The wicked man turneth away from his wickedness, that he may save his soul alive.
—Robert South
Topics: Eternity
Easier were it to hurl the rooted mountain from its base, than force the yoke of slavery upon men determined to be free.
—Robert South
Topics: Liberty
Impatience grasps at all, and admits of no delay, scorning to wait God’s leisure, and to attend humbly and dutifully upon the issues of his wise and just providence.
—Robert South
This peculiar ill property has folly, that it enlarges men’s desires while it lessens their capacities.
—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
In all worldly things that a man pursues with the greatest eagerness and intention of mind, he finds not half the pleasure in the actual possession of them as he proposed to himself in the expectation.
—Robert South
Topics: Anticipation, Possessions
Were there but one virtuous man in the world, he would hold up his head with confidence and honor; he would shame the world, and not the world him.
—Robert South
Topics: Virtue
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
Whatever the will commands the whole man must do; the empire of the will over all the faculties being absolutely over-ruling and despotic.
—Robert South
Topics: Will
We are to carry manner from the hand to the heart, to improve a ceremonial nicety into a substantial duty and the modes of civility into the realities of religion.
—Robert South
Topics: Manners
Beasts, birds, and insects, even to the minutest and meanest of their kind, act with the unerring providence of instinct; man, the while, who possesses a higher faculty, abuses it, and therefore goes blundering on. They, by their unconscious and unhesitating obedience to the laws of nature, fulfill the end of their existence; he, in willful neglect of the laws of God, loses sight of the end of his.
—Robert South
Every gross act of sin is much the same thing to the conscience that a great blow is to the head; it stuns and bereaves it of all use of its senses for a time.
—Robert South
Topics: Sin
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.
—Robert South
Topics: Ingratitude
How little do they see what really is, who frame their hasty judgment upon that which seems.
—Robert South
Topics: Judgment, Appearance
He whose heart is not excited on the spot which a martyr has sanctified by his sufferings, or at the grave of one who has greatly benefited mankind, must be more inferior to the multitude in his moral, than he possibly can be above them in his intellectual nature.
—Robert South
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
Faith in the hereafter is as necessary for the intellectual, as for the moral character; and to the man of letters, as well as the Christian, the present forms but the slightest portion of his existence.
—Robert South
Topics: Immortality
The vices of old age have the stiffness of it too; and as it is the unfittest time to learn in, so the unfitness of it to unlearn will be found much greater.
—Robert South
Topics: Age
They who engage in iniquitous designs miserably deceive themselves when they think they will go so far and no farther; one fault begets another; one crime renders another necessary; and thus they are impelled continually downward into a depth of guilt, which at the commencement of their career they would have died rather than have incurred.
—Robert South
Topics: Guilt
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
Where there is the most love to God, there will be there the truest and most enlarged philanthropy.
—Robert South
Topics: Philanthropy
Order is the sanity of the mind, the health of the body, the peace of the city, the security of the state.—As the beams to a house, as the bones to the body, so is order to all things.
—Robert South
Topics: Order, Organization
While actions are always to be judged by the immutable standard of right and wrong, the judgments we pass upon men must be qualified by considerations of age, country, station, and other accidental circumstances; and it will then be found that he who is most charitable in his judgment is generally the least unjust.
—Robert South
Topics: Judgment, Charity
The history of any private family, however humble, could it be fully related for five or six generations, would illustrate the state and progress of society better than the most elaborate dissertation.
—Robert South
Topics: Society
Innocence is like polished armor; it adorns and defends.
—Robert South
Topics: Innocence
Novelty is the great parent of pleasure.
—Robert South
Topics: Pleasure
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
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