William Cowper Quotes

Absence from whom we love is worse than death, and frustrates hope severer than despair.

Ceremony leads her bigots forth, prepared to fight for shadows of no worth. While truths, on which eternal things depend, can hardly find a single friend.

Restraining prayer, we cease to fight; Prayer keeps the Christian's armor bright; And Satan trembles when he sees The weakest saint upon his knees.

Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.

Who loves a garden loves a greenhouse too.

What peaceful hours I once enjoy'd! How sweet their memory still! But they have left an aching void The world can never fill.

O solitude, where are the charms That sages have seen in thy face? Better dwell in the midst of alarms, Than reign in this horrible place.

The earth was made so various, that the mind Of desultory man, studious of change, And pleased with novelty, might be indulged.

Meditation here may think down hours to moments. Here the heart may give a useful lesson to the head and learning wiser grow without his books.

Nature is a good name for an effect whose cause is God.

God made the country, and man made the town.

Thus happiness depends, as nature shows, less on exterior things than most suppose.

What is there in the vale of lifeHalf so delightful as a wife;When friendship, love and peace combineTo stamp the marriage-bond divine?

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

But oars alone can ne'er prevail To reach the distant coast; The breath of Heaven must swell the sail, Or all the toil is lost.

Still ending, and beginning still.

An idler is a watch that wants both hands; As useless if it goes as when it stands.

Mountains interposed Make enemies of nations, who had else Like kindred drops been mingled into one.

We are never more in danger than when we think ourselves most secure, nor in reality more secure than when we seem to be most in danger.

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.

O, popular applause! what heart of man is proof against thy sweet, seducing charms?

Absence of occupation is not rest.

Whoever keeps an open ear For tattlers will be sure to hear The trumpet of contention.

Words learn'd by rote a parrot may rehearse, But talking is not always to converse, Not more distinct from harmony divine The constant creaking of a country sign.

Toil for the brave! The brave that are no more.

Detested sport, That owes its pleasures to another's pain.

Greece, sound, thy Homer's, Rome thy Virgil's name, But England's Milton equals both in fame.

Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass, the mere materials with which wisdom builds, till smoothed and squared and fitted to its place, does but encumber whom it seems to enrich. Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; wisdom is humble that he knows no more.

Remorse begets reform.

There is a pleasure in poetic pains / Which only poets know.

Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds, Exhilirate the spirit, and restore The tone of languid nature.

O Winter! ruler of the inverted year, . . . I crown thee king of intimate delights, Fireside enjoyments, home-born happiness, And all the comforts that the lowly roof Of undisturbed Retirement, and the hours Of long uninterrupted evening, know.

Some to the fascination of a name, Surrender judgment hoodwinked.

Absence of occupation is not rest; A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed.

That good diffused may more abundant grow.

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

How various his employments whom the world Calls idle; and who justly in return Esteems that busy world an idler too!

How much a dunce that has been sent to roam, excels a dunce that has been kept at home.

Oh to have a lodge in some vast wilderness. Where rumors of oppression and deceit, of unsuccessful and successful wars may never reach me anymore.

An epigram is but a feeble thing - With straw in tail, stuck there by way of sting

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

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

A life of ease is a difficult pursuit.