William Cowper Quotes
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They best can judge a poet's worth, Who oft themselves have known The pangs of a poetic birth By labours of their own.
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I am out of humanity's reach.
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If a great man struggling with misfortunes is a noble object, a little man that despises them is no contemptible one.
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Detested sport, That owes its pleasures to another's pain.
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Made poetry a mere mechanic art.
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An inadvertent step may crush the snail That crawls at evening in the public path. But he that has humanity, forewarned, Will turn aside and let the reptile live.
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Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.
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In the vast, and the minute, we see The unambiguous footsteps of the God, Who gives its lustre to an insect's wing And wheels His throne upon the rolling worlds.
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Absence of occupation is not rest; A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed.
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Truth is the golden girdle of the globe.
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To impute our recovery to medicine, and to carry our view no further, is to rob God of His honor, and is saying in effect that He has parted with the keys of life and death, and, by giving to a drug the power to heal us, has placed our lives out of His own reach.
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Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appear'd, And ages ere the Mantuan swan was heard: To carry nature lengths unknown before, To give a Milton birth, ask'd ages more.
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Religion, richest favor of the skies.
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Blind unbelief is sure to err, And scan his work in vain; God is his own interpreter, And he will make it plain.
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Could he with reason murmur at his case, Himself sole author of his own disgrace?
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Misses! the tale that I relate This lesson seems to carry-- Choose not alone a proper mate, But proper time to marry.
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The darkest day, if you live till tomorrow, will have passed away.
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Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one, Have oft-times no connection. Knowledge dwells In heads replete with thoughts of other men; Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.
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The slaves of custom and established mode, With pack-horse constancy we keep the road Crooked or straight, through quags or thorny dells, True to the jingling of our leader's bells.
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Friends, books, a garden, and perhaps his pen, Delightful industry enjoy'd at home, An Nature, in her cultivated trim Dress'ed to his taste, inviting him abroad - Can he want occupation who has these?
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A life all turbulence and noise may seem To him that leads it wise and to be praised, But wisdom is a pearl with most success Sought in still waters.
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Satan trembles when he sees the weakest saint upon their knees.
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There goes the parson, oh illustrious spark! And there, scarce less illustrious, goes the clerk.
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What peaceful hours I once enjoy'd! How sweet their memory still! But they have left an aching void The world can never fill.