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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Some people are more nice than wise.
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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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Call'd to the temple of impure delight He that abstains, and he alone, does right. If a wish wander that way, call it home; He cannot long be safe whose wishes roam.
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And the tear that is wiped with a little address, May be follow'd perhaps by a smile.
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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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The only amaranthine flower on earth is virtue; the only lasting treasure, truth.
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Remorse, the fatal egg that pleasure laid.
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Fanaticism, the false fire of an overheated mind.
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Good sense, good health, good conscience, and good fame,--all these belong to virtue, and all prove that virtue has a title to your love.
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Without one friend, above all foes, Britannia gives the world repose.
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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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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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Did Charity prevail, the press would prove A vehicle of virtue, truth, and love.
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Religion, if in heavenly truths attired, Needs only to be seen to be admired.
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The beggarly last doit.
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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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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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How! leap into the pit our life to save? To save our life leap all into the grave.
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Whoever keeps an open ear For tattlers will be sure to hear The trumpet of contention.
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Words learn'd by rote a parrot may rehearse, But talking is not always to converse, Not more distinct from harmony divine The constant creaking of a country sign.
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Mercy to him that shows it, is the rule.