“A man of pleasure is a man of pains.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night VIII, Line 793.
Edward Young: 110 quotes3 likes
Edward Young Quotes
“Too low they build who build beneath the stars.”
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 206.
Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night VIII
“Like our shadows,
Our wishes lengthen as our sun declines.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night V, Line 661.
“What ardently we wish we soon believe.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night VII, Line 1311.
“They that on glorious ancestors enlarge,
Produce their debt instead of their discharge.”
Satire I, l. 147.
Love of Fame (1725-1728)
A Vindication of Providence; or, A True Estimate of Human Life (1728).
Satire VI, l. 208.
Love of Fame (1725-1728)
“How blessings brighten as they take their flight!”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night II, Line 602.
“Accept a miracle instead of wit,—
See two dull lines with Stanhope's pencil writ.”
Lines written with the Diamond Pencil of Lord Chesterfield; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“They only babble who practise not reflection.”
From Richard Brinsley Sheridan's Pizarro, Act I, sc. i.
Misattributed
“Tomorrow is a satire on today,
And shows its weakness.”
This is a quotation from "The Old Man's Relapse", a poem addressed to Edward Young, but written by Lord Melcombe.
Misattributed
“He mourns the dead who lives as they desire.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night II, Line 24.
“The future… seems to me no unified dream but a mince pie, long in the baking, never quite done.”
Widely attributed to Edward Young, but in fact written by E. B. White in Harper's Magazine (December 1940), and reprinted in his One Man's Meat (1942).
Misattributed
“The blood will follow where the knife is driven,
The flesh will quiver where the pincers tear.”
The Revenge, Act V, sc. ii.
“The man of wisdom is the man of years.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night V, Line 775.
“Unlearned men of books assume the care,
As eunuchs are the guardians of the fair.”
Satire II, l. 83.
Love of Fame (1725-1728)
“That life is long which answers life's great end.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night V, Line 773.
“Virtue alone has majesty in death.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night II, Line 650.
“The love of praise, howe'er concealed by art,
Reigns more or less, and glows in ev'ry heart.”
Satire I, l. 51.
Love of Fame (1725-1728)
“And all may do what has by man been done.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night VI, Line 606.
“A death-bed ’s a detector of the heart.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night II, Line 641.
“Much learning shows how little mortals know;
Much wealth, how little worldlings can enjoy.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night VI, Line 519.
“Where Nature’s end of language is declin’d,
And men talk only to conceal the mind.”
Satire II, l. 207.
Love of Fame (1725-1728)
“All men think all men mortal but themselves.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night I, Line 424.
“Man wants little, nor that little long.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night IV, Line 118.
“The house of laughter makes a house of woe.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night VIII, Line 757.
“There buds the promise of celestial worth.”
The Last Day, book iii; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“By night an atheist half believes a God.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night V, Line 177.
“Be wise today; 'tis madness to defer.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night I, Line 390.
“Wishing, of all employments, is the worst.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night IV, Line 71.
“The course of Nature is the art of God.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night IX, Line 1267.
“Heaven’s Sovereign saves all beings but himself
That hideous sight,—a naked human heart.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night III, Line 226.
“A friend is worth all hazards we can run.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night II, Line 571.
London 1759, p. 28 books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=h1IJAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA28&dq=mysteries <br class="br">Conjectures on Original Composition (1759)
