Edward Young Quotes

How blessings brighten as they take their flight.

Too low they build who build below the skies.

Narcissus is the glory of his race: For who does nothing with a better grace?.

A soul without reflection, like a pile Without inhabitant, to ruin runs.

How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, How complicate, how wonderful, is man!... Midway from nothing to the Deity!

Early, bright, transient, chaste as morning dew, She sparkled, was exhaled, and went to heaven.

The clouds may drop down titles and estates, and wealth may seek us, but wisdom must be sought.

Where boasting ends, there dignity begins.

Who lives to Nature, rarely can be poor ; who lives to fancy, never can be rich.

Leisure is pain; take off our chariot wheels; how heavily we drag the load of life!

Mine is the night, with all her stars.

'T is impious in a good man to be sad.

By night an atheist half-believes in God.

Some for renown, on scraps of learning dote, And think they grow immortal as they quote.

Life is the desert, life the solitude, death joins us to the great majority.

A friend is worth all hazards we can run.

But fate ordains that dearest friends must part.

There is something about poetry beyond prose logic, there is mystery in it, not to be explained but admired.

We bleed, we tremble; we forget, we smile - The mind turns fool, before the cheek is dry

Be wise with speed; a fool at forty is a fool indeed.

Truth never was indebted to a lie

Our birth is nothing but our death begun; As tapers waste, that instant they take fire.

Unlearned men of books assume the care, As eunuchs are the guardians of the fair.

Read nature; nature is a friend to truth.

Of man's miraculous mistakes, this bears The palm, "That all men are about to live."

The booby father craves a booby son, And by Heaven's blessing thinks himself undone.

The future... seems to me no unified dream but a mince pie, long in the baking, never quite done

The purpose firm is equal to the deed

Tomorrow is a satire on today, And shows its weakness.

An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave; legions of angels can't confine me there.

We are all born originals - why is it so many of us die copies?

One to destroy, is murder by the law; and gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe; to murder thousands, takes a specious name, 'War's glorious art', and gives immortal fame.

Titles are marks of honest men, and wise; The fool or knave that wears a title lies.

The course of Nature is the art of God

He that's ungrateful has no guilt but one; All other crimes may pass for virtues in him.

Affliction is a good man's shining time.

Friendship's the wine of life: but friendship new... is neither strong nor pure.

Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die.

Each moment has its sickle, emulous Of Time's enormous scythe, whose ample sweep Strikes empires from the root.

A prince indebted is a fortune made.

Some wits, too, like oracles, deal in ambiguities, but not with equal success; for though ambiguities are the first excellence of an imposter, they are the last of a wit.

Pity swells the tide of love.

Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne, In rayless majesty, now stretches forth Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumbering world.

The man that blushes is not quite a brute.

Less base the fear of death than fear of life.

Man maketh a death which Nature never made.

Like our shadows, our wishes lengthen as our sun declines.

Where, where for shelter shall the guilty fly, When consternation turns the good man pale?

Fond man! the vision of a moment made! Dream of a dream! and shadow of a shade!

Tomorrow is the day when idlers work, and fools reform and mortal men lay hold on heaven.