William Cowper - Man Quotes

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But many a crime deem'd innocent on earth
Is register'd in Heaven; and these no doubt
Have each their record, with a curse annex'd.
Man may dismiss compassion from his heart,
But God will never.

William Cowper
Happy the man who sees a God employed in all the good and ills that checker life.

William Cowper
Man disavows, and Deity disowns me: hell might afford my miseries a shelter; therefore hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths all bolted against me.

William Cowper
Reasoning at every step he treads,
Man yet mistakes his way,
While meaner things, whom instinct leads,
Are rarely known to stray.

William Cowper
Praise enough
To fill the ambition of a private man,
That Chatham's language was his mother tongue.

William Cowper
My dog! what remedy remains,
Since, teach you all I can,
I see you, after all my pains,
So much resemble man!

William Cowper
If my resolution to be a great man was half so strong as it is to despise the shame of being a little one...

William Cowper
He that holds fast the golden mean, 22
And lives contentedly between
The little and the great,
Feels not the wants that pinch the poor,
Nor plagues that haunt the rich man's door.

William Cowper
O Popular Applause! what heart of man
Is proof against thy sweet seducing charms?

William Cowper
A man renowned for repartee will seldom scruple to make free with friendship's finest feeling, will thrust a dagger at your breast, and say he wounded you in jest, by way of balm for healing.

William Cowper
But what is man in his own proud esteem?
Hear him, himself the poet and the theme;
A monarch clothed with majesty and awe,
His mind his kingdom and his will his law.

William Cowper