William Cowper Quotes
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Man may dismiss compassion from his heart, but God never will.
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The bird that flutters least is longest on the wing.
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But slaves that once conceive the glowing thought Of freedom, in that hope itself possess All that the contest calls for; spirit, strength, The scorn of danger, and united hearts, The surest presage of the good they seek.
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Happy the man who sees a God employed in all the good and ills that checker life.
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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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No man can be a patriot on an empty stomach.
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The rich are too indolent, the poor too weak, to bear the insupportable fatigue of thinking.
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Elegant as simplicity, and warm As ecstasy.
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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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Tis Providence alone secures In every change both mine and yours.
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Still ending, and beginning still.
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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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Would I describe a preacher, I would express him simple, grave, sincere; In doctrine uncorrupt; in language plain, And plain in manner; decent, solemn, chaste, And natural in gesture; much impress'd Himself, as conscious of his awful charge, And anxious mainly that the flock he feeds May feel it too; affectionate in look, And tender in address, as well becomes A messenger of grace to guilty men.
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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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To see the Law by Christ fulfilled, And hear His pardoning voice Changes a slave into a child, And duty into choice.
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Blest be the art that can immortalize.
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The proud are ever most provoked by pride.
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Absence from whom we love is worse than death, and frustrates hope severer than despair.
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I seem forsaken and alone, / I hear the lion roar; / And every door is shut but one, / And that is Mercy's door.
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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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Hast thou not learnd what thou art often told, A truth still sacred, and believed of old, That no success attends on spears and swords Unblest, and that the battle is the Lords?
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Even in the stifling bosom of the town, A garden, in which nothing thrives, has charms That soothes the rich possessor; much consol'd, That here and there some sprigs of mournful mint, Or nightshade, or valerian, grace the well He cultivates.
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All we behold is miracle.
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Forced from home, and all its pleasures, afric coast I left forlorn; to increase a stranger's treasures, o the raging billows borne. Men from England bought and sold me, paid my price in paltry gold; but, though theirs they have enroll'd me, minds are never to be sold.