William Cowper Quotes
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When scandal has new-minted an old lie, Or tax'd invention for a fresh supply, 'Tis call'd a satire, and the world appears Gathering around it with erected ears; A thousand names are toss'd into the crowd, Some whisper'd softly, and some twang'd aloud, Just as the sapience of an author's brain, Suggests it safe or dangerous to be plain.
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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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But conversation, choose what theme we may, And chiefly when religion leads the way, Should flow, like waters after summer show'rs, Not as if raised by mere mechanic powers.
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[My kitten's] gambols are not to be described, and would be incredible, if they could.
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Some people are more nice than wise.
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The only amaranthine flower on earth is virtue; the only lasting treasure, truth.
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Time, as he passes us, has a dove's wing, Unsoil'd, and swift, and of a silken sound.
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Whoever keeps an open ear For tattlers will be sure to hear The trumpet of contention.
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Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass, the mere materials with which wisdom builds, till smoothed and squared and fitted to its place, does but encumber whom it seems to enrich. Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
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There is mercy in every place. And mercy, encouraging thought gives even affliction a grace and reconciles man to his lot.
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Mercy to him that shows it, is the rule.
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How happy it is to believe, with a steadfast assurance, that our petitions are heard even while we are making them; and how delightful to meet with a proof of it in the effectual and actual grant of them.
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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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Remorse, the fatal egg that pleasure laid.
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There is a mixture of evil in everything we do; indulgence encourages us to encroach, while we Crabbe exercise the rights of children, we become childish.
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Thus happiness depends, as nature shows, less on exterior things than most suppose.
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All affectation; 'tis my perfect scorn; Object of my implacable disgust.
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The Cross! There, and there only (though the deist rave, and the atheist, if Earth bears so base a slave); There and there only, is the power to save.
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Great offices will have great talents, and God gives to every man the virtue, temper, understanding, taste, that lifts him into life, and lets him fall just in the niche he was ordained to fill.
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Men deal with life as children with their play, Who first misuse, then cast their toys away.
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War's a game, which, were their subjects wise, Kings would not play at.
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Unmissed but by his dogs and by his groom.
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It is a terrible thought, that nothing is ever forgotten; that not an oath is ever uttered that does not continue to vibrate through all times, in the wide spreading current of sound; that not a prayer is lisped, that its record is not to be found st
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And the tear that is wiped with a little address, May be follow'd perhaps by a smile.