William Cowper Quotes
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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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Defend me, therefore, common sense, say From reveries so airy, from the toil Of dropping buckets into empty wells, And growing old in drawing nothing up.
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The bird that flutters least is longest on the wing.
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He is the freeman whom the truth makes free, And all are slaves besides.
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No man can be a patriot on an empty stomach.
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Far happier are the dead methinks than they who look for death and fear it every day.
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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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Lord, it is my chief complaint, That my love is weak and faint; Yet I love thee and adore, Oh for grace to love thee more!
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I pity bashful men, who feel the pain Of fancied scorn and undeserved disdain, And bear the marks upon a blushing face, OF needless shame, and self-impos'd disgrace.
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Man disavows, and Deity disowns me: hell might afford my miseries a shelter; therefore hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths all bolted against me.
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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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That good diffused may more abundant grow.
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In man or woman, but far most in man, And most of all in man that ministers, And serves the altar, in my soul I loathe All affectation. 'Tis my perfect scorn: Object of my implacable disgust.
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Spring hangs her infant blossoms on the trees, Rock'd in the cradle of the western breeze.
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But animated nature sweeter still, to soothe and satisfy the human ear.
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Ceremony leads her bigots forth, prepared to fight for shadows of no worth. While truths, on which eternal things depend, can hardly find a single friend.
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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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Skins may differ, but affection Dwells in white and black the same.
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And, of all lies (be that one poet's boast) / The lie that flatters I abhor the most.
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But war's a game, which, were their subjects wise, Kings should not play at. Nations would do well To extort their truncheons from the puny hands Of heroes, whose infirm and baby minds Are gratified with mischief, and who spoil, Because men suffer it, their toy the world.
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No wild enthusiast could rest, till half the world like him was possessed.
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Still ending, and beginning still.
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England with all thy faults, I love thee still-- My country! and, while yet a nook is left Where English minds and manners may be found, Shall be constrained to love thee.
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I was a poet too; but modern taste Is so refined and delicate and chaste, That verse, whatever fire the fancy warms, Without a creamy smoothness has no charms. Thus, all success depending on an ear, And thinking I might purchase it too dear, If sentiment were sacrific'd to sound, And truth cut short to make a period round, I judg'd a man of sense could scarce do worse Than caper in the morris-dance of verse.