William Cowper - Time Quotes

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Philologists, who chase
A panting syllable through time and space,
Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark
To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noah's ark.

William Cowper
Visits are insatiable devourers of time, and fit only for those who, if they did not that, would do nothing.

William Cowper
So manifold, all pleasing in their kind,
All healthful, are the employs of rural life,
Reiterated as the wheel of time,
Runs round; still ending, and beginning still.

William Cowper
Time, as he passes us, has a dove's wing,
Unsoil'd, and swift, and of a silken sound.

William Cowper
Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one,
Have oft-times no connexion, Knowledge dwells
in heads replete with thoughts of other men,
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.

William Cowper
Misses! the tale that I relate
This lesson seems to carry —
Choose not alone a proper mate,
But proper time to marry.

William Cowper
Those golden times
And those Arcadian scenes that Maro sings,
And Sidney, warbler of poetic prose.

William Cowper
I will venture to assert, that a just translation of any ancient poet in rhyme is impossible. No human ingenuity can be equal to the task of closing every couplet with sounds homotonous, expressing at the same time the full sense, and only the full sense of his original.

William Cowper
The pipe with solemn interposing puff,
Makes half a sentence at a time enough;
The dozing sages drop the drowsy strain,
Then pause, and puff—and speak, and pause again.

William Cowper
His head,
Not yet by time completely silvered o'er,
Bespoke him past the bounds of freakish youth,
But strong for service still, and unimpaired.

William Cowper
How readily we wish time spent revoked, that we might try the ground again where once--through inexperience, as we now perceive--we missed that happiness we might have found!

William Cowper
Anticipated rents, and bills unpaid,
Force many a shining youth into the shade,
Not to redeem his time, but his estate,
And play the fool, but at the cheaper rate.

William Cowper