Beasts, birds, and insects, ...

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.
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 Robert Southey

Quotes from the same author

It is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.
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 Robert Southey
No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other's worth.
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 Robert Southey
Live as long as you may, the first twenty years are the longest half of your life.
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 Robert Southey
Oh, when a mother meets on high The babe she lost in infancy, Hath she not then for pains and fears, The day of woe, the watchful night, For all her sorrow, all her tears, An over-payment of delight?
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 Robert Southey
It is not for man to rest in absolute contentment. He is born to hopes and aspirations as the sparks fly upward, unless he has brutalized his nature and quenched the spirit of immortality which is his portion.
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 Robert Southey