William Cowper Quotes

Variety's the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavor.

Knowledge is proud that it knows so much; wisdom is humble that it knows no more.

...So let us welcome peaceful evening in.

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

Grief is itself a medicine.

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

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

God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform. He plants his footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm.

I pity them greatly, but I must be mum, for how could we do without sugar and rum?

Who loves a garden loves a greenhouse too.

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.

And hast thou sworn on every slight pretence, Till perjuries are common as bad pence, While thousands, careless of the damning sin, Kiss the book's outside, who ne'er look'd within?

The bud may have a bitter taste, But sweet will be the flower.

Man may dismiss compassion from his heart, but God never will.

Glory, built on selfish principles, is shame and guilt.

Satan trembles when he sees the weakest saint upon their knees.

A fool must now and then be right, by chance

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

Trials make the promise sweet, Trials give new life to prayer; Trials bring me to His feet, Lay me low, and keep me there.

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

An inadvertent step may crush the snail That crawls at evening in the public path. But he that has humanity, forewarned, Will turn aside and let the reptile live.

When nations are to perish in their sins, 'tis in the Church the leprosy begins.

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

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.

I pity bashful men, who feel the pain Of fancied scorn and undeserved disdain, And bear the marks upon a blushing face, OF needless shame, and self-impos'd disgrace.

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

Remorse, the fatal egg that pleasure laid.

Skins may differ, but affection Dwells in white and black the same.

They fix attention, heedless of your pain, With oaths like rivets forced into the brain; And e'en when sober truth prevails throughout, They swear it, till affirmance breeds a doubt.

Fanaticism, the false fire of an overheated mind.

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.

The nurse sleeps sweetly, hired to watch the sick, / whom, snoring, she disturbs.

God made the country, and man made the town.

Heaven's harmony is universal love.

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.

I am monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute, From the centre all round to the sea, I am lord of the fowl and the brute.

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

Blind unbelief is sure to err, And scan his work in vain; God is his own interpreter, And he will make it plain.

How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude! But grant me still a friend in my retreat, whom I may whisper, solitude is sweet.

This fond attachment to the well-known place Whence first we started into life's long race, Maintains its hold with such unfailing sway, We feel it e'en in age, and at our latest day.

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

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.

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

Pleasure is labour too, and tires as much.

Admirals extolled for standing still, or doing nothing with a deal of skill.

Tea - the cups that cheer but not inebriate.

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

War's a game, which, were their subjects wise, Kings would not play at.

They whom truth and wisdom lead, can gather honey from a weed.

Blest be the art that can immortalize,--the art that baffles time's tyrannic claim to quench it.