William Cowper Quotes
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Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs Receive our air, that moment they are free; They touch our country, and their shackles fall.
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The Spirit breathes upon the Word and brings the truth to sight.
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But poverty, with most who whimper forth Their long complaints, is self-inflicted woe; The effect of laziness, or sottish write.
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Most satirists are indeed a public scourge; Their mildest physic is a farrier's purge; Their acrid temper turns, as soon as stirr'd, The milk of their good purpose all to curd. Their zeal begotten, as their works rehearse, By lean despair upon an empty purse.
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Is base in kind, and born to be a slave.
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This fond attachment to the well-known place Whence first we started into life's long race, Maintains its hold with such unfailing sway, We feel it e'en in age, and at our latest day.
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Reasoning at every step he treads, Man yet mistakes his way, Whilst meaner things, whom instinct leads, Are rarely known to stray.
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Man in society is like a flow'r, Blown in its native bed. 'Tis there alone His faculties expanded in full bloom Shine out, there only reach their proper use.
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The path of sorrow, and that path alone, leads to the land where sorrow is unknown.
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My soul is sick with every day's report of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled.
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There is a pleasure in poetic pains / Which only poets know.
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Man may dismiss compassion from his heart, but God never will.
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The parable of the prodigal son, the most beautiful fiction that ever was invented; our Saviour's speech to His disciples, with which He closed His earthly ministrations, full of the sublimest dignity and tenderest affection, surpass everything that I ever read; and like the spirit by which they were dictated, fly directly to the heart.
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In indolent vacuity of thought.
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When from soft love proceeds the deep distress, ah! why forbid the willing tears to flow?
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Sin let loose speaks punishment at hand.
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He that attends to his interior self, That has a heart, and keeps it; has a mind That hungers, and supplies it; and who seeks A social, not a dissipated life, Has business.
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Folly ends where genuine hope begins.
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Ye therefore who love mercy, teach your sons to love it, too.
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Blest be the art that can immortalize.
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Sacred interpreter of human thought, How few respect or use thee as they ought! But all shall give account of every wrong, Who dare dishonor or defile the tongue; Who prostitute it in the cause of vice, Or sell their glory at a market-price!
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Fashion, leader of a chatt'ring train, Whom man for his own hurt permits to reign Who shifts and changes all things but his shape, And would degrade her vot'ry to an ape, The fruitful parent of abuse and wrong, Holds a usurp'd dominion o'er his tongue, There sits and prompts him with his own disgrace, Prescribes the theme, the tone, and the grimace, And when accomplish'd in her wayward school, Calls gentleman whom she has made a fool.
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Forgot the blush that virgin fears impart To modest cheeks, and borrowed one from art.
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Twere better to be born a stone Of ruder shape, and feeling none, Than with a tenderness like mine And sensibilities so fine! Ah, hapless wretch! condemn'd to dwell Forever in my native shell, Ordained to move when others please, Not for my own content or ease; But toss'd and buffeted about, Now in the water and now out.