William Cowper Quotes
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Tis pleasant, through the loopholes of retreat, To peep at such a world; to see the stir Of the Great Babel, and not feel the crowd.
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There goes the parson, oh illustrious spark! And there, scarce less illustrious, goes the clerk.
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All constraint, / Except what wisdom lays on evil men, / Is evil.
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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.
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Whoever keeps an open ear For tattlers will be sure to hear The trumpet of contention.
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They whom truth and wisdom lead, can gather honey from a weed.
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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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They love the country, and none else, who seek For their own sake its silence and its shade. Delights which who would leave, that has a heart Susceptible of pity, or a mind Cultured and capable of sober thought.
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I have a kitten,the drollest of all creatures that ever wore a cat's skin.
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No traveler e'er reached that blest abode who found not thorns and briers in his road.
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How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude! But grant me still a friend in my retreat, whom I may whisper, solitude is sweet.
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[My kitten] is dressed in a tortoise-shell suit, and I know you will delight in her.
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The man to solitude accustom'd long, Perceives in everything that lives a tongue; Not animals alone, but shrubs and trees Have speech for him, and understood with ease, After long drought when rains abundant fall, He hears the herbs and flowers rejoicing all.
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Absence of proof is not proof of absence.
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Strange as it may seem, the most ludicrous lines I ever wrote have been written in the saddest mood.
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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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Grief is itself a medicine.
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An epigram is but a feeble thing - With straw in tail, stuck there by way of sting.
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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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Learning itself, received into a mind By nature weak, or viciously inclined, Serves but to lead philosophers astray, Where children would with ease discern the way.
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Thus happiness depends, as nature shows, less on exterior things than most suppose.
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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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No tree in all the grove but has its charms, Though each its hue peculiar.
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Some men make gain a fountain, whence proceeds A stream of liberal and heroic deeds; The swell of pity, not to be confined Within the scanty limits of the mind.