William Cowper Quotes
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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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No wisdom that she may gain by experience and reflection hereafter, will compensate the loss of her present hilarity.
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The bud may have a bitter taste, But sweet will be the flower.
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Misery still delights to trace Its semblance in another's case.
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Man may dismiss compassion from his heart, but God never will.
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No man can be a patriot on an empty stomach.
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Still ending, and beginning still.
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A moral, sensible, and well-bred manWill not affront me, and no other can.
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He is the freeman whom the truth makes free, And all are slaves besides.
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Elegant as simplicity, and warm As ecstasy.
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All truth is precious, if not all divine; and what dilates the powers must needs refine.
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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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Strength may wield the ponderous spade, May turn the clod, and wheel the compost home; But elegance, chief grace the garden shows, And most attractive, is the fair result Of thought, the creature of a polished mind.
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The fall of waters and the song of birds, And hills that echo to the distant berds, Are luxuries excelling all the glare The world can boast, and her chief favorites share.
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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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'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume; And we are weeds without it.
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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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He finds his fellow guilty of a skin Not color'd like his own, and having pow'r T' enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
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The statesman, lawyer, merchant, man of trade Pants for the refuge of some rural shade, Where all his long anxieties forgot Amid the charms of a sequester'd spot, Or recollected only to gild o'er And add a smile to what was sweet before, He may possess the joys he thinks he sees, Lay his old age upon the lap of ease, Improve the remnant of his wasted span. And having lived a trifler, die a man.
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Absence from whom we love is worse than death, and frustrates hope severer than despair.
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Heaven's harmony is universal love.
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No wild enthusiast could rest, till half the world like him was possessed.
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The rich are too indolent, the poor too weak, to bear the insupportable fatigue of thinking.
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Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa around, And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn Throws up a steamy column, and the cups That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each, So let us welcome peaceful evening in