William Cowper Quotes

309 Sourced Quotes

We sacrifice to dress till household joys and comforts cease. Dress drains our cellar dry, and keeps our larder lean.

William Cowper
Where thou art gone, adieus and farewells are a sound unknown.

William Cowper
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.

William Cowper
But, oh, Thou bounteous Giver of all good, Thou art, of all Thy gifts, Thyself thy crown!

William Cowper
And, of all lies (be that one poet's boast) / The lie that flatters I abhor the most.

William Cowper
A glory gilds the sacred page, Majestic like the sun, It gives a light to every age, It gives, but borrows none.

William Cowper
Heaven speed the canvas, gallantly unfurl'd, To furnish and accommodate a world, To give the Pole the produce of the sun, And knit the unsocial climates into one.

William Cowper
God never meant that man should scale the Heavens
By strides of human wisdom. In his works,
Though wondrous, he commands us in his word
To seek him rather where his mercy shines.

William Cowper
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.

William Cowper
If hindrances obstruct the way, Thy magnanimity display. And let thy strength be seen: But O, if Fortune fill thy sail With more than a propitious gale, Take half thy canvas in.

William Cowper
As creeping ivy clings to wood or stone, And hides the ruin that it feeds upon, So sophistry, cleaves close to, and protects Sin's rotten trunk, concealing its defects.

William Cowper
Be it a weakness, it deserves some praise, We love the play-place of our early days; The scene is touching, and the heart is stone, That feels not at that sight, and feels at none.

William Cowper
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.

William Cowper
The Frenchman, easy, debonair, and brisk, Give him his lass, his fiddle, and his frisk, Is always happy, reign whoever may, And laughs the sense of mis'ry far away.

William Cowper
Where penury is felt the thought is chain'd,
And sweet colloquial pleasures are but few.

William Cowper
Twere better to be born a stone Of ruder shape, and feeling none, Than with a tenderness like mine And sensibilities so fine! Ah, hapless wretch! condemn'd to dwell Forever in my native shell, Ordained to move when others please, Not for my own content or ease; But toss'd and buffeted about, Now in the water and now out.

William Cowper
How! leap into the pit our life to save?
To save our life leap all into the grave.

William Cowper
But 'tis not timber, lead and stone, An architect requires alone, To finish a fine building — The palace were but half complete, If he could possibly forget The carving and the gilding.

William Cowper
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.

William Cowper
E'er since, by faith, I saw the stream
thy flowing wounds supply,
redeeming love has been my theme,
and shall be till I die.

William Cowper
I seem forsaken and alone, / I hear the lion roar; / And every door is shut but one, / And that is Mercy's door.

William Cowper
Not a flower
But shows some touch, in freckle, streak or stain,
Of his unrivall'd pencil. He inspires
Their balmy odors, and imparts their hues,
And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes
In grains as countless as the seaside sands,
The forms with which he sprinkles all the earth
Happy who walks with him!

William Cowper
She that asks
Her dear five hundred friends, contemns them all,
And hates their coming.

William Cowper
Dejection of spirits, which may have prevented many a man from becoming an author, made me one. I find constant employment necessary, and therefore take care to be constantly employed.... When I can find no other occupation, I think; and when I think, I am very apt to do it in rhyme.

William Cowper
He that has seen both sides of fifty has lived to little purpose if he has no other views of the world than he had when he was much younger.

William Cowper
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.

William Cowper
Some write a narrative of wars and feats, Of heroes little known, and call the rant A history.

William Cowper
The man that dares traduce, because he can with safety to himself, is not a man.

William Cowper
When all within is peace How nature seems to smile Delights that never cease The live-long day beguile

William Cowper
If a great man struggling with misfortunes is a noble object, a little man that despises them is no contemptible one.

William Cowper